DispatchHealth – Nurses on House Calls by Alexander Gornyi

The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.

There was a popular concept in the venture world about five years ago – ‘uber for doctors on house calls.’ The patient taps a button, the good doctor rushes to the rescue. It worked just as good as a taxi in the presentations. In real life, the model didn’t take off. For example, the American Heal remained a fairly minor service.

DispatchHealth, the American startup of the day, slightly altered its predecessors’ thesis and already considerably superseded them by scale. It does practically the same but it sends out nurses instead of doctors. The prime cost of such a call will naturally be many-fold lower, and the efficiency with the majority of diagnoses is exactly the same. If a necessity arises after all, the nurse makes a video call from the patient’s home to the doctor’s office – but the doctor spends five minutes on the conversation instead of one hour on the road.

As already spoilered, such an approach works much better – at least, from the investors’ point of view. DispatchHealth brought in USD 330M in its recent round. They don’t share their valuation, but one year ago the startup was worth USD 1.5B.

https://www.dispatchhealth.com/

#health #unicorn #usa #uber