DeepSummary
The Park brothers, Ed and Todd, shared their journey of starting Devoted Health, a company aimed at revamping the broken US healthcare system. Their motivation stemmed from their immigrant parents' pursuit of the American dream and a desire to create value by doing good. After failures with their first company Athena Health, they realized the need to build an entirely new healthcare system from scratch to truly deliver better care.
Devoted Health was built as an 'all-in-one healthcare solution' comprising five key components - a health insurance company, a navigation service, partnerships with doctors and hospitals, their own virtual medical group, and a software platform called Orinoco that integrates all the components. Their mission is to provide 'the right care at the right place at the right time' enabled by technology and AI.
The brothers emphasized how Devoted Health has achieved remarkable results - superior clinical outcomes, high customer satisfaction scores, cost savings for Medicare, and rapid nationwide growth. They attribute the success to their long journey of understanding healthcare's complexities, their team's expertise, and the unique combination of their skills - Ed's technical prowess and Todd's policy experience.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The US healthcare system is fundamentally broken, excessively complex, and misaligned in incentives.
- Building incremental solutions within the existing system is ineffective; a complete overhaul by creating an entirely new system was necessary.
- Technology, data, AI, and modern software are critical enablers for transforming healthcare delivery and alignment of incentives.
- An 'all-in-one' vertically integrated solution combining health insurance, care delivery, navigation, and a unified software platform is key.
- Devoted Health achieved remarkable outcomes by optimizing for 'the right care at the right place at the right time'.
- Preventive care and keeping people out of hospitals is more effective than reactive acute care in improving outcomes and reducing costs.
- The founders' complementary skills, tenacity, and healthcare experience over decades were invaluable assets.
- Overcoming incumbent systems often requires rebuilding from the ground up with a clean slate tech stack and new incentive models.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “I don't care how smart you are, okay? You cannot navigate yourself through american healthcare.“ by Ed Park
- “So part of this is that if you actually produce a net better service, it doesn't mean that you're going to get paid for it. That was actually the really sort of incredibly painful lesson we learned from the first time that we built Athena.“ by Ed Park
- “Software eats the world, right?“ by Todd Park
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Episode Information
a16z Podcast
Andreessen Horowitz
3/25/24