A NEW BUSINESS MODEL FOR HEALTH SERVICES
READING TIME: 5 MINUTES
The challenge I've experienced, as have many people I've interacted with on the subject of healthcare, is the lack of dialogue and
control over health issues when interfacing with the medical system as it is
typically encountered. General Practitioners are paid by the visit, they are busy
people, they have a large clientele they need to process and they have a very
narrow field of endeavour, illness. It is my interest to address this
deficiency of service by designing a business model that offers the full
panoply of medical thought and service under a single roof.
Imagine if you will a “health mall”, a place where all medical services are present in commensurate proportion to the market and typical interdependence. As you enter the foyer of the “retail” facility the first things that greet your eye are the merchandised products ranging from nutraceuticals to running shoes and health food. On the second floor, perhaps on a visible veranda, there will be GPs, Specialists, Naturopathic Dr., Dietitians - an in house lab with “retail” medical testing, PSA, nutrient testing - imaging facilities and retail access to standardized imaging testing - chelation clinic - medical services brokerage … etc. ...
Presently, doctors are
constrained as to the breath of testing they can to do, that is to say they
require an illness justification for medical testing. Medical testing for
nutritional information is limited if it is existent at all in our system at
large, by commercializing the offering for retail testing; the development of
sufficient market volume will take place to reduce the price of “non-medical”
testing to the point of “ready accessibility”. I believe this concept will
carry to other aspects of the business, for example, imaging. This thought
is supported by the typical occurrence in business that has a given asset able
to offer a better value offering due to a high volume of usage.
There are opportunities
as well to compete with free by making a better and more convenient
offering for services offered by the government system. By way of example,
there are breast imaging technologies that are, by a considerable margin, more
effective and less disruptive than the government offers. It is conceivable
that the imaging could be offered for as little as $150.00 - for many busy
women the superior offering, better treatment and better outcomes would offer
great value. Presently an MRI at a private clinic is $1500, by introducing
baseline MRI imaging and bolstering the optimal use of assets, perhaps that
number could be reduced to under $500; the key here is full optimization of
assets and the full exploitation of volume.
There are executive
medical care offerings in larger centers that take a completely holistic
approach to the management of care, health assessment, nutrition, exercise programming
and illness care. The health mall concept takes this approach and melds it with, retail opportunities and government-supported services - bringing larger volume to the offerings, generating this
superior product at a price where upper-middle and upper-income brackets can
access personalized care.
A customer would begin
their interface with this service by going through an induction process.
Pricing would be offered as an all-inclusive health package or a la carte,
depending on preference. Upon choosing to initiate an association with the health
mall, the customer would be brought into an induction process which would have
a “complete” health assessment as the primary component. Induction would be
administered by a health practitioner who would hit on all the “typical” health
markers; body mass index, blood pressure, basic dietary information, general
activity profile etc. ... The customer would then be exposed to a standard bank
of medical / health testing, perhaps - blood platelet profiles, nutritionally
related blood testing, heavy metal testing, screening for common disorders.
Imaging would be performed in relation to any specific complaints as well as
baseline imagining for future reference. At this point, a generalized health
profile is developed listing findings, risks, opportunities and any chronic
disorders. The nurse practitioner, based on initial findings would then
assemble an interdisciplinary team of medical professionals specific to the
needs of this individual, they and the customer would meet and a health plan
would be developed. From there the customer would interface with the facility
at large to execute on the plan.
The goal here is,
through the systemization of a personalized offering to a broad market, to offer a
superior and complete proposition. It may be that through the course of
business plan development a franchise structure emerges as optimal, so as to
facilitate centers of excellence and to centralize activities best suited to specialized
facilities, for example, bulk processing of standard blood testing. Regardless
of how it is achieved, people want a means by which to have control over their
health, people are more cognizant than ever of health and prevention, people
want the full panoply of health treatment and people need convenience and
value.
I’ve spent a considerable
amount of time engaging health-related industry to find a means to provide the
aforementioned imperatives to the public; the present interface with the
illness system is awkward, public, fragmented, paternalistic and fails at
health and prevention - I believe I can develop a superior offering that
consolidates the entire health challenge under one roof at a price point that
is comparable to the present aggregated expenditure on health of most middle
and upper-income people.
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