How a $1,500 Start-up Changed Health Care
20th August 2011
He watched doctors treat up to 40 patients a day and have at least four staff members each to handle the nitty-gritty paperwork.
“It’s around 70 percent overhead,” he says. “It wasn’t like this decades ago. Doctors served their neighborhoods, took cash, and didn’t charge a lot because there was so little overhead. So I designed a process that went back to this model, looking at it from the patient’s perspective, and just injected a little technology.”
There are two major fields remaining in which automation is long overdue: Education and health care. This is a very good start.
With $1,500, he set up a house-call-only practice in his Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood, serving only two zip codes. He created a website through Apple’s iWeb that featured his resume, and posted his schedule on a Google Calendar so patient’s could enter in an appointment time online.
Note: No office, so no office expense. (When was the last time you saw a doctor make a house call? I remember one when Eisenhower was President. Nothing since.) Scheduling is done online, which ensures that (a) his prospective patients are at least middle-class, since they have Internet access, and so will probably be able to pay him, and (b) no staff expense.