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