Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Philippe d’Offay, CEO of PMD (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the journey like in 2001 to 2007? It was slow as you are pointing out, but were you still getting customers? What was the sustaining strategy during that period?

Philippe d’Offay: At that time in healthcare, the consolidation hadn’t quite begun. There was this very strong entrepreneurial spirit in healthcare. We were going after the single doctors. That’s all we really could handle. At the same time though, I would say it was really lucky. We got a lead for a very large hospital system. That hospital system represented 500 different licenses. We got that business pretty early on.

We started seeing some growth because of that. The problem though is >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Philippe d’Offay, CEO of PMD (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: There a lot of people trying to do the solution that you’re describing – this central electronic health record of a patient. Can you help me understand when you started this company, what was the competitive landscape like, and how has that competitive landscape evolved over the years as you have been in this business?

Philippe d’Offay: When we started, we invented Card Capture. Unbeknown to us, there were other companies who were, at the same time, coming up with the same idea. We focused on mobility. That was the key aspect of what would make us different against our competitors. On day one, there were no competitors. It didn’t seem like anyone was trying to do what we thought was a pretty brilliant idea, which was to get doctors to use a mobile device to keep track of their patients.

The first thing I learned about medical software at PMD and as I was researching was that there’s this general rule in healthcare that healthcare technology >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Philippe d’Offay, CEO of PMD (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What happens in 1998?

Philippe d’Offay: You have to go back a little bit because the two questions overlap with one another. There’s a lot of news lately about medical errors. According to a Johns Hopkins, more than a quarter million patients die due to medical errors a year. In 1991, my grandfather was one of those who died unnecessarily. In 2003, my mother was one of those who died unnecessarily.

In between those two was this awakening that I’m focusing my energy and career on consulting with business, and here you have this huge dysfunctional industry with innocent people dying. I was very drawn. I’ve avoided healthcare my whole life. All of a sudden, I realized why I couldn’t do that anymore. My mother was diagnozed with an awful brain tumour in 1998 about a week after I started my consulting firm. It was good timing because I didn’t have to >>>

1Mby1M Deal Radar 2016: i-Human Patients, Sunnyvale, California

i-Human Patients, Inc. is a cloud-based e-learning company that is focused on rapidly developing and evaluating critical cognitive competencies in healthcare students and practitioners. Its main value proposition is that it simulates encounters with patients in order to teach users how to quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively assess and diagnose patients.

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Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: HealthRight CEO John Palumbo (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: There are two issues that I see here. Your point is well-taken that you’re catering to the corporates and so forth, but there are more and more people in the world who are on their own and are not part of a large corporation. Individual healthcare programs are unattractive. Even small business healthcare programs are very unattractive. Not everything can be tackled with this general physician kind of mode. There are lots of specialist issues.

John Palumbo: That is certainly a point of view.

Sramana Mitra: Do you not agree with this point of view? >>>

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: HealthRight CEO John Palumbo (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How do you see all this playing out? Let’s just start with US. It seems to get more and more complicated. The charges are going up all the time. What trends do you see?

John Palumbo: I think telehealth is a tactical enabler to a much bigger play. Where we see ourselves going in terms of our mission is fulfilling the promise of population health management. In population health management, you have to look at five cohorts of people. You have well people, folks who are at risk, folks who have acute or episodic need, folks who are chronically ill, and then you have catastrophic folks.

One thing for certain is that every one of us will be in all five of those categories. We just don’t know when. The real issue in terms of lowering cost is to create cultures of health and wellness, whether that be at the individual level, family level, or entire corporations. We’ve done research for over 15 years where we know that the highest-performing shareholder companies in the United States are those companies who are also the most successful in creating these cultures of health and wellness. >>>

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: HealthRight CEO John Palumbo (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you a few more onion-peeling questions here to understand the model. It’s quite complex and the healthcare system is really a nightmare. What is the monthly fee that you charge for being a member in your network?

John Palumbo: Depending on the program, it could be anywhere from $14.95 a month to $24.95 a month.

Sramana Mitra: Are the services that you provide covered by insurance?

John Palumbo: The physician consult would not be but if you are insured and the physician writes a pharmacy prescription or a laboratory test prescription, you would simply use your insurance card. We would help you get that prescription to the testing centre or the pharmacy of your choice. In the subscription program, because there is no cost to the physician, there’s no reason to worry about whether you’re covered or not. >>>

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: HealthRight CEO John Palumbo (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Of the four million members, what percentage comes through these corporate accounts?

John Palumbo: We run at about a 60/40 split between sponsored population and Direct to Consumer.

Sramana Mitra: Do you remember if the hospital systems were in the sponsored program or direct to consumer?

John Palumbo: Sponsored program.

Sramana Mitra: Hospitals and corporate programs are in sponsored and the rest are direct, right?

John Palumbo: Correct. >>>