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There is massive consolidation occurring in the healthcare space right now, and as a result hospital systems are acting almost like private equity groups. They’re sucking up all of these once-independent primary care providers and are distributing all of the administrative functions that these providers manager to shared, centralized care teams in an effort to cut costs, just like any good private equity investor would.
In the case of healthcare, most of this is happening in outpatient care management. As of today, 99% of all health care delivery in this country happens outside of the office, not when people are face to face with their doctor. Healthcare systems are starting to realize this, and they are now staffing rooms full of nurses who are monitoring the highest risk patients to address this need.
This is a trend that, with support from the right technology, has the potential to dramatically improve patient satisfaction, patient health and business health all at the same time. At the same time, the health system can save money by pooling all of its resources in these back-offices, and patients are getting more access to their providers and better out-of-office care as a result. The missing piece of the puzzle is simple enough: how can care managers identify the patients that need their support and thereby connect with the right patient at the right time?
Epharmix and iSelect: Improving Healthcare
That is why iSelect has invested in a company called Epharmix, which is taking the digital transition of healthcare a step further by developing new tools to enable effortless, seamless patient monitoring. Epharmix creates technology that sends disease-specific questions to patients automatically, enabling the existing care managers to serve many more patients and bend the cost curve. The unobtrusive system uses mobile technology to collect patient data while they go about their daily lives, improving patients results while simultaneously reducing workloads for providers.
I recently had Blake Marggraff, the CEO and co-founder of Epharmix, on iSelect’s “Innovation Anarchy” podcast to talk about the technology the company is working on, the challenges it faces in the digital medical space, and the opportunities he sees to vastly improve healthcare delivery in this country.
Click above to listen to the podcast.
