Emerging growth companies are the innovative, upstart ventures that challenge market incumbents by creating new technologies and business models. In no sector is this more needed than in healthcare, where growing companies hold the keys to improve the quality and cost of patient care.
The Healthcare debate continues in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. But entrepreneurship—not politics—will create true healthcare reform. Innovative health care companies must survive and thrive. To do that, they must first
get across NO MAN's LAND, where companies are too big to be small and too small to be big. No Man’s Land is the adolescent stage of business, where over 90% of growing companies fail.
Many emerging care management companies face an uphill battle. They frequently lack a marketing strategy to reach the influencers and decision makers in the payor community. They also often lack adequate infrastructure to support their growth. Many need to raise capital to expand their operations. These companies eventually get stuck in No Man’s Land, trying to reach the take-off point where they can grow profitably.
The less than 10% of these emerging healthcare companies that survive No Man’s Land create almost all innovation in healthcare, including:
Care Coordination
New platforms for coordination of care between the outstanding doctors, nurses, statisticians, health intelligence coordinators and other clinicians can reform our fragmented, dysfunctional health care system—that provides excellent care to some and average care to others, wasting billions of dollars in the process.
Care Management Solutions
Entrepreneurs create and grow case management companies that provide tools to coordinate delivery of care and information about care, to replace our highly fragmented payor system and deliver more effective and efficient care.
The Problem: Uncoordinated Care
A chronically ill patient with multiple conditions is released after a 3 day stay in the hospital for surgery.
The discharging physician orders home visits and electronic monitoring. A home visit is ordered, but does not get scheduled properly and may not happen for 10 days post discharge.
The hospital is overwhelmed with other cases. In the meantime, a remote monitoring device to measure vital signs and transmit data to the doctor has been shipped to the patient. But it sits in its box on the patient’s kitchen counter.
Day 9, post-discharge, the patient begins to feel ill and have complications and calls her doctor. Day 10, the home visit takes place and it is determined that the home environment is not suitable for the patient, due to poor ventilation.
As a result, the patient is ordered back to the hospital for a 5-day stay to address the complications from surgery, costing the system thousands. The post discharge plan will be ordered again, sending the patient back home – with the home care issues still not communicated properly back to the hospital.
This is a typical example of the problems care management companies try to solve.
The Solution: Information When Clinicians Need It
Healthcare entrepreneurs create new platforms to better coordinate care for patients like the previous example, helping well intentioned but overwhelmed clinicians to work together. These platforms can provide the clinicians with sufficient information to take a breath and make an informed decision, getting it right the first time.
Healthcare Innovation: Case Management
Progressive companies with innovative case management solutions can help produce better health are at lower cost. But first they need to get to a stage of consistent, profitable growth—so they can drive real healthcare reform.
Future articles will further explore the practical steps that care management entrepreneurs can take to get out of No Man’s Land.
Michael.Condron@NewportBoardGroup.com
Health Reform image credit: whitehouse.gov
