Full Transcript Why startups pay for physician expertise 0:01 Welcome to the Startup [music] Physicians podcast, where we explore how 0:05 doctors lead healthcare innovation. Please like and follow our show to join 0:10 our community [music] of physicians contributing to meaningful change. 0:16 Hey everyone, welcome back to Startup Physicians. [music] 0:19 I'm your host, Dr. Allison Kurfman, and last week we walked through seven 0:24 startup functions where physicians can add incredible value. If that episode 0:30 got your interest and now you're thinking about what functions you could 0:33 support, today we're going to go a little deeper because knowing what you 0:38 can do is only half of the equation. The question that naturally follows is why 0:43 would companies pay for these services? What is the true value? 0:48 And startups don't hire physicians because they're nice people that happen 0:54 to know medicine. They hire physicians because they can solve expensive 0:59 problems that no one else can solve. And quite honestly, any startup founder that 1:04 is working with a limited budget, they're always looking at the return on 1:09 investment of hiring anyone. And so today I want to show you exactly how the 1:15 functions we discussed last week can translate into the language that 1:19 startups actually care about, which is measurable business impact. 1:25 Every dollar that a startup spends on external expertise will fall into one of 1:31 three value categories. It will be to help them make more money, 1:37 to help them save money, or to help them reduce risk. And here's what's 1:42 remarkable. Your clinical skills naturally drive results in all three 1:47 areas, often simultaneously. So I'm going to take you through real 1:51 examples of physicians creating a lot of value through revenue growth, cost 1:56 optimization, and risk mitigation. Before we explore how physicians create 2:02 value, let me share this framework that really shapes how I think about my 2:07 expertise in the startup world. So, every startup, regardless of what 2:12 they're building, is trying to fight three fundamental battles. So, number
The three value categories startups care about 2:17 one is revenue growth. How do we make more money? How do we get more customers 2:24 or patients? How do we increase adoption rates or close bigger deals or expand 2:30 into new markets? So, this is all about scaling the business and driving 2:35 sustainable growth. The second one is cost optimization or 2:40 efficiency. So, how do we do more with less? How do we build smarter products? 2:45 How do we avoid expensive mistakes and prevent costly rework? How do we 2:50 streamline operations? And this is about efficiency and preventing things that 2:55 can affect profitability. Sometimes this bucket is one that kind of makes us not 3:01 feel great as physicians because the whole concept of can you do more with 3:05 less might remind us of some of the pressures we feel from this culture of 3:12 health care these days that feels like it puts a lot on the backs of the 3:16 frontline workers. And I want to emphasize that this cost optimization 3:21 isn't always like trying to ask people to do more and offering them less 3:25 resources. It's more along the lines of like how can we use technology to 3:29 optimize different steps in the process? How can we, you know, provide more 3:35 support in one area that actually can really reduce the amount that you need 3:40 somewhere else? And so, this is a very kind of operational bucket of of value. 3:46 And then the last one is really important in health care, which is risk 3:49 mitigation. So, how do we protect what we've built? How do we avoid having 3:55 issues with regulatory or compliance issues? How do we prevent patient harm 4:00 and protect our reputation um and stay compliant with evolving standards? I've 4:05 talked about risk in relation to other industries that, you know, if you were 4:11 going to launch new marketing product and like 4:17 the worst thing that could happen is like 4:20 you might lose some Instagram followers or um you know, waste some money that 4:26 you don't get a return. Okay, that that's bad for a business, but in 4:31 healthcare if you 4:34 take a risk that was not a good risk to take or maybe you weren't even aware of 4:38 it and somebody was harmed. I mean, these are people's lives we're talking 4:42 about. And so, risk mitigation is really important. It's part of why I really 4:46 take it seriously to be such a you know, critical driver for patient 4:52 safety. Um and so, I think that risk mitigation 4:55 is a really important bucket for us to understand. Now, here's the breakthrough 5:00 insight that most physicians miss. Your clinical skills directly impact all 5:06 three of these areas in ways that can be very valuable to startups. 5:10 So, the problem is we've never been taught to think about our skills in 5:15 business terms. So, we think in terms of patient outcomes, but not necessarily 5:19 business outcomes, but they're very intimately connected. So, today we're 5:24 going to explore each of these three value areas and show you exactly how 5:29 physician expertise drives measurable results in each one. 5:33 And you'll see real examples of physicians creating significant business 5:37 impact and you'll start to recognize your own value in completely new ways. 5:42 And so, when we move on to other thoughts about like strategic networking 5:46 or generating leads or identifying companies that you can help, having this 5:50 core understanding of the value you can create is super important for you as you 5:56 start this journey. So, let's get started. Value one is 6:00 revenue growth. This is one that is, of course, the lifeblood of any business. 6:05 So, this is helping startups make more money by increasing adoption, building 6:10 trust, driving sales, growing contracts. And physicians actually excel at revenue 6:15 generation in ways that might surprise you. 6:19 Every day, you take complex information and make it trustworthy and actionable. 6:25 You build credibility from the moment you walk into a room. You guide 6:30 decision-making and you help people move from confusion about something to 6:36 confidence. And these are actually the skills that you need to drive revenue 6:40 growth. So, going back to some of the functions, marketing and brand 6:44 credibility is one of the most powerful ways that physicians can help drive 6:47 revenue. Um I have a friend who was actually in
Revenue growth 6:51 episode nine of this podcast, Dr. Tanya Altmann, who is a pediatrician with a 6:55 large following in child health and safety brands actually actively seek her 7:00 out to act as a spokesperson. But, here's what makes her so valuable. She 7:05 doesn't just deliver their message, she actually helps craft it. So, when a 7:10 product depends on gaining the trust of parents or pediatricians, she can really 7:16 deeply understand what resonates because of her day-to-day clinical practice. And 7:21 she only takes on clients that she genuinely believes in, which makes her 7:25 endorsements incredibly authentic and effective. And marketing is really the 7:30 lifeblood of a business because it's what leads to sales and revenue. And a 7:35 company that can't produce revenue can't continue to exist. So, when physicians 7:40 help a company craft messaging that truly connects with the right patients, 7:47 parents, or even health systems or doctors, this is really directly 7:51 impacting the bottom line. >> Another function that really contributes 7:55 to revenue generation is business development, which we talked about in 7:58 the past how important it is to have a physician at the table, particularly 8:03 when companies are seeking health care contracts or funding. And this is where 8:08 physicians can really create massive impact. And it's one of the easiest 8:13 areas to demonstrate value because truly growth strategists and business 8:19 development specialists really command high fees. So, at my first company 8:24 we paid a lot of advisors who were really connected to health plans and 8:29 Medicaid plans, and they could help us really understand the needs of the 8:34 payers and their operations, and they could make direct introductions for us 8:38 and bring credibility to our pitches and make it be a warm introduction instead 8:44 of a a cold outreach. And I actually do this sort of work regularly now. I 8:50 can connect companies with a lot of people who need their product or could 8:54 potentially contract with them, and I often have a seat at the table when 8:58 they're pitching for fundraising or trying to close contracts. So, the 9:02 clinical perspective that I bring can add credibility that makes the 9:06 difference between closing a deal and not closing a deal. And I don't want to 9:10 give myself too much credit cuz quite frankly, I really deeply rely on the
Business development and healthcare contracts 9:15 other experts at the table who are experts in the contracting models or in 9:20 the business models. When it comes to the clinical model, they really need a 9:24 clinician who's able to not only read the slides for the pitch, but then 9:30 provide patient stories and provide context for all the follow-up questions 9:35 related to the actual clinical model. I'll give you a concrete example of how 9:40 physician insight also can drive revenue through products design and development. 9:46 So, if you remember back to another podcast that I did with an actuary named 9:51 Isaac Addae, it was episode 22, it really illustrates this point. So, he 9:57 said that his team was working with an organization that was focused on better 10:00 care for musculoskeletal deliveries, so spine surgeries and back surgeries, 10:06 which is about 10 to 12% of Medicare costs. So, it's a huge market 10:11 opportunity. And they spent several months building financial projection 10:16 models, but the numbers just were not adding up and it wasn't making sense. 10:21 And finally, one of their board advisors brought in an orthopedic surgeon who 10:26 they said, you know, what, he's been in this field forever, let's have him take 10:30 a look at this. And that surgeon started asking a lot of questions about
Product design and clinical insight 10:34 considering a different pathway because, you know, these actuaries didn't 10:38 actually recognize how the patients were moving through the system. And the team 10:43 realized they didn't even know that such pathways existed. And he said that 10:47 several months later, working with that clinician and the others he brought on 10:51 board, they had a completely different model. And the value proposition became 10:55 really clear across spinal surgeries, back pain management, and physical 11:00 therapy integration. And he said by the time they were done, the potential 11:03 savings in the market were north of several billion dollars for the broader 11:07 Medicare population. And what he said on that podcast episode is 11:12 like, this is the kind of thing that physicians assume we know and we have 11:16 zero clue. And these are brilliant people in their field, they are 11:20 unbelievable at, you know, both in startups or actuaries or payers, they 11:27 have a really clear lens of how they look at things. And sometimes you need 11:32 to bring in that other perspective of someone with real-life experience 11:36 operating in these very, very complicated systems because healthcare 11:40 is just not straightforward. And so, that's an example of a physician whose 11:44 clinical insight didn't just improve their product, it revealed an entirely 11:49 different revenue opportunity that was potentially worth billions. And that's 11:54 to me the power of clinical expertise in product development. So, when you help a 11:59 startup understand the real patient journey, the actual clinical workflows, 12:03 or the true pain points that need solving, you're not just being helpful, 12:07 you're potentially unlocking massive revenue opportunities that they 12:11 otherwise wouldn't see. So, moving on to the second value lever, which is cost 12:16 optimization. I will say this is the one that I don't spend as much time on. I 12:22 think that there are some people who are really, really great at um 12:26 being operators and creating efficiencies, but I want to talk a 12:30 little bit about it because helping startups save money by building smarter 12:35 and avoiding waste can really prevent expensive mistakes. Physicians are 12:39 natural cost optimizers because we're constantly working within resource 12:44 constraints while maintaining quality outcomes. So, every time you've 12:48 streamlined a workflow or eliminated redundant steps or found an efficient 12:54 way to deliver care, you've demonstrated cost optimization skills and these are 12:59 very valuable to startups. So, one of the functions that I'll bring up here is 13:03 clinical research and validation. So, that's um something where physicians can 13:07 actually save companies a lot of money by um helping improve their outcomes. 13:14 Yesterday I met with a company that reached out specifically about this 13:17 challenge. Their entire question was about how to use their initial beta 13:21 testing and pilot programs to show outcomes and demonstrate success to 13:25 future clients. So, this is something that I've 13:29 dealt with a lot from companies that often they'll have a direct-to-consumer 13:34 app that are being purchased by individuals and allow them for some more 13:38 beta testing, but their real target market is health plans and employers, 13:43 which would be much larger groups of people and bigger contracts. And they
Cost optimization 13:47 need to really extract the best outcomes and data from their current users to win 13:52 these much larger contracts. And without proper validation and the right clinical 13:56 measurements, they could spend millions of dollars trying to scale a product 14:00 that doesn't actually deliver the outcomes they're promising. Understand 14:04 exactly Understanding exactly what to measure clinically and making sure that 14:08 they're measuring the right things could be the difference between landing 14:11 multi-million dollar contracts and and not landing those. So, the clinical 14:15 validation work prevents costly pivots and failed product launches while 14:21 positioning them for significant future revenue. And going back to another 14:25 function of product design and development, we talked about how that 14:28 can increase revenue, but from a cost perspective, it's about preventing 14:33 expensive mistakes before they happen. And so, I think that one of the things
Clinical validation and outcomes 14:38 that we can do when we're doing product design is continue to 14:43 pair it down over and over again until the economic model fits the actual 14:49 demand and and what you can get paid for it. And so, if you can actually make a 14:55 model more efficient by really asking questions like, is this stuff necessary? 15:01 Is there a better way we could do this? Could we use technology for this piece 15:05 of it? Could we make it less heavy on like actual human input? Those are all 15:11 things that can be cost-saving. Another function, customer and user 15:15 insight, can prevent one of the most expensive mistakes that startups make, 15:20 which is building a product that nobody wants or workflows that nobody will 15:24 adopt. And so, you live these pain points every day in the healthcare 15:29 system, and so you know exactly what makes patients confused or what might 15:34 not work in a traditional healthcare system or what tech features can be 15:38 helpful versus annoying. And every time you've used healthcare technology and 15:43 thought, "Whoever designed this clearly never worked in a hospital." you're 15:47 identifying the exact insights that could save a startup from expensive 15:51 rebuilds and failed launches. So, when startups build solutions without the 15:56 clinical input, they often have to completely reconstruct their products 16:00 after launch. Like, I have certainly seen companies that maybe didn't have 16:04 the strongest clinical model, but they did get contracts, and then they were 16:09 scrambling to create the model once they were already up and running, and it 16:13 ended up being a lot more expensive and is hard for the company to kind of get 16:17 their footing after that. Another cost reduction function is strategic advisory 16:22 roles, um and that's like the the seventh function that I talked about 16:26 last week. So, from a cost perspective, it's about helping teams make smarter 16:30 resource allocation decisions. And when I think about how I actually did this at 16:37 Imagine, I built our clinical advisory board. So, while I do sit on multiple 16:42 advisory boards, I wanted to give you guys the other perspective of why would 16:46 someone actually pay to create an advisory board? And we were specifically 16:51 recruiting physicians with really diverse expertise. So, we looked for 16:55 people with, you know, behavioral health or health policy or rural health, health
Avoiding expensive product mistakes 16:59 equity. Like, we wanted to have a lot of diverse viewpoints on this board because 17:06 and we wanted to pay for those perspectives because we wanted to help 17:09 them look for issues or problems that may be coming down the road or things 17:14 that we might not be seeing. And so, this also will fall into the third 17:17 bucket that we'll talk about for value, which is decreasing risk, but it also 17:22 can help improve your costs if you're able to identify, you know, better ways 17:26 of doing things. The key insight here is that sometimes 17:30 preventing expensive mistakes is more valuable than generating new revenue. 17:35 And startups operate with limited resources and can't afford to waste 17:39 money on wrong directions. So, physician advice can really help them to optimize 17:45 what they're doing. And then the last value lever, which is 17:50 really important um in health care, is risk mitigation. So, this is helping 17:55 startups survive by avoiding patient safety issues, regulatory trouble, and 18:02 protecting their reputation in a highly regulated industry. 18:06 Health care is one of the most regulated industries in the world, and startups 18:11 operating in this space face risks that could literally destroy their business 18:15 overnight. And physician expertise in navigating 18:19 these risks is not just valuable, it's often essential for survival. And these 18:23 are things that you absolutely know because you practice patient safety 18:29 every day. And so the first one that I will talk 18:33 about is the idea of clinical product development. I know that we talked about 18:38 it in the context of increasing revenue and decreasing costs, but decreasing 18:45 risk is one of the really solid ways where physicians can contribute to 18:49 companies that are trying to get a new model off the ground and really taking 18:53 an assessment of their model and looking for areas that where could something 18:57 fall through the cracks? Where could this be 19:00 What could be a problem that could um arise from the way that this model is 19:06 built? And what are the guardrails we need to put on this because if something 19:10 bad happens to a patient in a company, it's it would be of course devastating 19:16 for the the patient and the clinicians involved, but it it could be the end of 19:20 the company. So, mitigating risk by really advocating for patient safety and 19:25 helping companies see their blind spots is where physicians can add enormous 19:30 value. Also, looking at kind of more regulatory like policy work, I want to 19:36 also point back to um one of my former podcast guest who uh was really working 19:42 on with companies during the infant formula shortage crisis. She said that 19:47 she really wanted to encourage the FDA to open the borders and take a look at 19:52 international formulas because there were some international formulas that 19:56 had really good options, but they weren't available in the US. And 20:00 meanwhile, we were having this massive shortage. And she ended up um being able 20:05 to work on a policy and regulation around that to help get other 20:10 international formula formulas approved by including them in the FDA proposal.
Risk mitigation 20:15 And so, the business value here, her clinical expertise and policy knowledge 20:20 literally helped create a completely new market opportunity for companies that 20:26 had these international formulas. And companies that were able to navigate 20:30 that regulatory pathway were gaining access to that market. And another 20:34 example of decreasing risk is the clinical research and validation from a 20:38 risk perspective can also ensure that products can really with withstand 20:42 regulatory scrutiny, avoid safety issues. So, 20:46 you don't want to be a startup that's making clinical claims without proper 20:49 validation. And so, you want to make sure that you're compliant. Um and 20:53 physician involvement in healthcare technology, you know, we think a lot 20:58 about these new tech solutions that are coming to market, particularly with AI, 21:03 and we immediately jump to like all the bad things that could happen. And I 21:07 think that's normal and that's really natural for us as physicians to think 21:12 about the things that could go wrong and a lot of us stop there. I see it a lot 21:18 in discussion groups where physicians will say, you know, I don't think this 21:23 is going to be a good idea for health care cuz it's going to cause this and 21:27 that and this and that and we just shouldn't do it at all. And honestly, I 21:31 think that's a a not great perspective because other people who don't see those 21:36 risks will just carry it forward. And so I really encourage physicians to get 21:41 involved in the areas that they feel like could be risky so that they can
Patient safety and clinical guardrails 21:45 help provide that guidance. And I think decreasing risk is a huge area of value 21:51 that physicians can provide and we have a very unique perspective to provide 21:55 that value. So all together, the pattern that I want 21:59 you to see is that your clinical expertise can create measurable business 22:03 value across all three dimensions, whether it's growing their revenue, 22:08 optimizing their costs, or mitigating risk. And some of these happen 22:12 simultaneously. And when you prevent a medication error, 22:17 you're demonstrating risk management that's worth a lot. And when you 22:21 streamline a patient process, you're showing ways to optimize a process and 22:25 make it more efficient. When you help a family understand and commit to 22:30 treatment, you're really demonstrating the same communication skills that can 22:35 drive revenue in a marketing or business development environment for a startup. 22:40 This is just my encouragement to you that you actually hold some of these 22:43 skills already and you're not just a subject matter expert, you're a 22:48 multi-dimensional strategic asset who can understand how 22:52 to drive business outcomes in one of the most complex and regulated industries in 22:58 the world. Your expertise can drive measurable business value through 23:03 revenue growth, cost optimization, and risk mitigation. These are the things 23:07 that really determine whether startups succeed or fail, and it's a really clear 23:12 framework by which founders who are hiring advisors can really measure what 23:19 is the return on investment, what is the value of investing in a clinical 23:25 advisor. I want you to understand these value 23:30 drivers that matter to all companies and help you give a framework to see it 23:35 clearly. >> [music] 23:36 >> So, let's change the future of healthcare together, and thanks for 23:39 listening. I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Startup 23:43 Physicians podcast. [music] This community was built for doctors who 23:46 want to contribute to the future of healthcare. We offer support for 23:50 physicians [music] who are ready to make the next step towards building the 23:53 career they've dreamed of. Visit startupphysicians.com [music] 23:58 to learn more. And if this episode resonated with you,
Why physicians should engage with healthcare innovation 24:02 share it with another friend who needs [music] to hear it. Let's change the 24:05 future of healthcare together.
Comments