A ZD Net post reports that during a fireside chat with AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher at the 2013 Data Driven Conference on Wednesday, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin described the inspiration behind his latest startup, Glow. Glow is a mobile app launched earlier this year that’s trying to improve fertility using “big data.” Right now, the app quite literally wants to help women get pregnant, which in such layman’s terms sounds like a parody. But Levchin is serious that this type of app can lead to better doctor-patient decision making, and ultimately trim wasted spending. He’s stated that the company’s goal is to expand into other niches in the healthcare field in order to accomplish this.
Tag Archives: Direct Care
August 1, 2013
July 31, 2013
Tele-therapist Uses Tumblr To Connect With Cash-Paying Clients
We found the “Angry Therapist” while reading The Atlantic. Los Angeles therapist John Kim took an untraditional approach to building his practice. He acquired patients through a popular Tumblr blog. Writer Amanda Pelleschi says, “The site effectively harnesses the zeitgeist of internet culture – using memes and hashtags – and pairs it with a variety of classic psychological approaches (cognitive behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, psychodynamic, etc), to bring psychotherapy to the millennial masses.” If you’re intrigued what this “zeitgeist” looks like, check out Kim’s website theangrytherapist.tumblr.com.
July 31, 2013
Workforce.com Highlights Proactive Benefits Of Direct Care, Challenges Critics
Workforce.com published an article responding to critics who say that a subscription model doesn’t make sense for direct care. Naysayers suppose that patients stand to waste money if they don’t use the service, much like an unused gym membership. But physician and health care consultant Dr. Zubin Damania, who is working with online retailer Zappos (they’re considering offering a direct primary care clinic to Las Vegas-based employees), had this to say: “Would you use car insurance to get your oil changed or tires changed? I see primary care the same way.” Hmmm, sounds like an analogy we’ve been promoting for a while now.
July 30, 2013
A Direct Care Venture Capitalist Finds An Obamacare Silver Lining
We mentioned New Atlantic Ventures (NAV) earlier in the month. They’re an investment firm backing, amongst many endeavors, direct care entrepreneurs who are helping hospitals insure their own employees. Evidently we’re not the only ones who think Obamacare will increase demand for cash-only medicine. The Managing Partner of NAV, John Backus believes there is a silver lining to forcing states to open a health insurance market and offer price transparency, increased costs due to all the red tape. And with this increased cost will come demand for more affordable options. It turns out that direct care sans middleman is exactly that kind of option.
You can read John Backus’ complete op/ed on Huffington Post.
July 30, 2013
More Doctors Steer Clear of Medicare
And another doctor adopting “direct care” has gained mainstream media attention. Dr. Juliette Madrigal-Dersch is a physician in Marble Falls, Texas. She’s joined a growing number of doctors who choose to not accept payment from Medicare, Medicaid and private-insurance networks. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, saying, “Fewer American doctors are treating patients enrolled in the Medicare health program for seniors, reflecting frustration with its payment rates and pushback against mounting rules, according to health experts.” According to their research the number of doctors who opted out of Medicare last year, while still a small proportion of the nation’s health professionals, nearly tripled from three years earlier.
Check out the complete article (subscription required), or if you don’t feel like paying the news source, you can watch the ad-supported video segment.
July 26, 2013
Doctors, Let’s Not Forget That Patients Are People
Have you checked out Mind The Gap yet? It’s a blog written by Stephen Wilkins, MPH. He’s interested in physician-patient communication that’s both personal and professional. His most recent post (Via Health Works Collective) addresses the issue of relevancy, something that you might immediately think, that? Oh, I know that. But the truth is, if you’ve been a healthcare professional running through what Michael Tetreault called the “hamster wheel” then you might have developed some bad communication habits.
July 25, 2013
Even Satisfied Patients Think Direct Care Is “Too Good To Be True”
Dave Chase continues his Forbes expose awakening business and industry types to the benefits of direct primary care (DPC). Now having interviewed more and more DPC consumers, the recurring theme to their comments is something like “it’s too good to be true.” That’s a concern we had. You have this straight-forward, commonsense approach that saves everyone time, cuts insurance expenditures, cuts downstream high-cost treatments and can make doctors more money… The people who experience it love it. But how do we convince other people that it’s really happening, when happy patients can’t even believe it?
July 24, 2013
Are Doctors Passing The Buck On Healthcare Costs?
Eryn Brown of the LA Times posted an article yesterday claiming that physicians are concerned about skyrocketing healthcare costs. However, according to survey results released earlier in the week, most doctors don’t believe they have a “major responsibility” for reducing those costs.
July 23, 2013
Six In 10 Physicians Believe Many Doctors Will Retire Earlier Than Predicted
A Deloitte survey reports that a majority of physicians believe many doctors will retire earlier than planned in the next one to three years. The same percentage think medical experts losing control of their clinics will jeopardize the healthcare administration. This group also believes strongly that implementation of the Affordable Health Care for America Act, or Obamacare, will push doctors out of the primary care industry altogether.
A spokeswoman for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Jane Orient, was not surprised by the results at all. In a recent WND article, it was reported that she said doctors already have started leaving the profession through early retirement. Of course, some will instead seek alternatives to what they see coming in the federal government’s takeover of health care. And that’s why we’ve been championing our model of direct care. Because the worst outcome is a doctor not practicing at all. And if that’s what an overregulated market will encourage, then we have a serious problem.
July 23, 2013
LINKS: Will “Federal Data Services Hub” Pose An Obamacare Privacy Risk?
We came across an opinionated article on Rare.us asking, “Would you trust thousands of low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your private financial and medical information?” Our immediate answer was of course not. But with Obamacare’s enactment, we might not have a choice. That’s because of something called the Federal Data Services Hub. This Data Hub will supposedly be a comprehensive database of personal information established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to help with the federally facilitated health insurance exchanges.
To paraphrase, with Obamacare, each state will need to have a transparent state insurance market (currently not every state has one). If a state creates and operates one themselves, then great. But if they don’t, the government will “run” one for them. And to help “run” this state insurance market, the Obama administration is planning to hire “tens of thousands” of “navigators” earning “$20 an hour or more” to help guide buyers to their taxpayer-funded coverage, according to the Washington Examiner.
Here’s a round-up of articles to give you a more complete picture of the Federal Data Services Hub: