What's the 'Future of clinics'? - week 2

Heal launches telemedicine; Major health companies reshaping clinics; At-home care on the rise

We're three weeks away from "Future of Clinics", part of the Invent Health salon series hosted by Vator, in partnership with HP and UCSF Health Hub. The upcoming event focuses on new ways to receive care. 

Register  to join the discussion!

Thanks to Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix and Facebook - and many amazing new-economy tech companies - our society has been transformed to be more impatient, demanding and entitled. And that has created all new opportunities for mental health services!

But in all seriousness, it just means we like convenience and we like to be served. And our healthcare systems needs to serve those needs with new services, like on-demand doctor's visits and or interaction via text, video, audio or robot and 24-7 access to data (medical history, vital signs, daily activity etc.) and transparency around pricing. 

The Future of Clinics will bring together CEOs and Chief Strategy Officers of Heal, Solv, One Medical, Crossover Health, Sutter Health, and more. They're all creating new solutions to bring care services to the 21st Century.

As always, here's my roundup of relevant news leading up to the event.

Heal launches its first telemedicine service

Heal CEO and co-founder Nick Desai will be joining us on June 27.

Heal, launched in 2014 to bring back doctor house calls, is now offering telemedicine services to patients who have already used their at-home doctor services. To date, Heal has delivered 110,000 house calls which it claims resulted in $68 million in healthcare cost savings as it's reduced unnecessary trips to the emergency room by 71 percent. 

Remote care is just a complementary service those who are already seeing a doctor at their home for 35 to 50 minutes. Wow. I don't think I've spent that much time with my primary care physician ever. 

But back in the 70's or 50 yrs ago, nearly 50 percent of care services were house calls. And that meant more time with the family doctor. Maybe not 50 minutes but certainly a good half hour. Why did this change? It was partly due to the expansion of clinics and hospitals. During that time, the number of doctors practicing primary care as a percentage of the population was flat vs a 5500 percent increase in healthcare administration, according to Desai.

That meant doctors were flooded with patients, leaving them with under 15 minutes a visit for each one. 

Desai co-founded Heal with his wife to allow doctors to practice house calls again.   

Desai explained to Steve Loeb in a recent article, that he wants to "rehumanize the doctor/patient relationship by putting doctors in the patient’s home and delivery high-quality, primary preventative and urgent care for patients of all ages, from cradle to grave, through doctor house calls."

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Major health companies reshaping clinics

What are companies such as Humana, CVS Health, UnitedHealthcare, Kaiser Permanente, Walgreens, Walmart, Apple, Medtronic, Sutter Health, Mount Sinai and Erlanger doing to redesign the future of clinics?

Steve Loeb looks at their initiatives. We'll also talk to innovators at Sutter Health and Dignity Health, now known as CommonSpirit Health, at "Future of Clinics" to learn about their vision and reality of bringing these ideas to market.

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Dignity-CHI Systems offer home-care services

CommonSpirit Health recently partnered with startup firm Contessa to launch an at-home care option. CommonSpirit is a Chicago-based health system formed by the merger of Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives. 

Contessa is the third-party operator of home recovery care services for acute care (severe injuries and illnesses), post-acute care and surgical procedures. For 30 days, patients get access to a patient coordinator available 24/7 and a nurse and doctor who can provide virtual and/or in-home visits, as well as remote monitoring of vitals, biometrics and adherence to the care plan.  

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UNC student creates app that connects users with free or affordable healthcare 

You have to love those young minds. There's a new app that connects users with free or affordable healthcare. Aneesh Agarwal, a junior at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, built an 

Aneesh Agarwal is a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an interest in technology and public health. The rationale for building the app? The uninsured population.

"I was shocked to learn that 10 percent of the population doesn't have health insurance -- so that was 30 million people across the country who just don't have access to good, quality, affordable care," he tells WRAL.com. 

It's a great idea. SolvHealth's CEO Heather Fernandez will be joining us at Invent Health on June 27. SolvHealth is aggregating clinics to make them more accessible to users who are clueless about what clinic to go to that's local.  

Read more.

Retail-based healthcare clinics

Wow. Retail-based healthcare clinics have grown nearly 50% in the past three years, according to research from real estate operator JLL. The Retail and the New Healthcare Consumer found that shopping centers are positioned to change their offerings in response to consumer's growing healthcare needs.

"We found that most clinic visits at retail locations occur outside of regular physician hours, and increasingly consumers want the convenience of completing all of their shopping and errands in one trip – essentially they want to grab shoes, their groceries and get a flu shot in one swoop," said Greg Maloney, CEO of JLL Retail.

There were an estimated 2,800 medical clinics in retail spaces in the US, up from 351 in 2006, according to Accenture. Also, the number of healthcare tenants has grown by 47 percent. As I said above: Wow.

Read more.

Image source: bizjournals