Seeing ZocDoc, And Listening To A Panel On Improving Health Care
A few evenings ago, I visited ZocDoc. The youthful company, seemingly approaching middle age among startups that began in 2007, looks to be thriving. ZocDoc keeps its headquarter downtown in a loft-like, mainly open, SoHo space replete with a ping-pong table, open kitchen and mock street signs pointing (abstractly) to concepts like “Make Work Fun” and “Patients First.” The vibe amongst the crowd – a hundred or so by my crude estimate: a mix of doctors and entrepreneurs, a few journalists, insurance executives and investors, along with some ZocDoc employees – was strictly positive.
According to its website*, ZocDoc is:
… a free service that allows patients to find a nearby doctor or dentist who accepts their insurance, see their real-time availability, and instantly book an appointment via ZocDoc.com or ZocDoc’s free apps for iPhone or Android.
Basically it’s a small-but-not-tiny, growing health IT company that provides an on-line way, like an app, for people to find doctors who accept their insurance and have available time slots. (Think of OpenTable, but for health care?) Since 2007, ZocDoc has expanded. The company, with some 450 employees, claims over 2.5 million users monthly in over 1,800 cities.* Its business model includes that doctors, dentists and possibly other provider-types, pay an annual fee to participate ($300 per month, an employee told me). Since it started, ZocDoc has received significant press and gained prominent investors like Goldman Sachs and Jeff Bezos. It’s won awards as a top-notch place to work. Kudos!
The main event was a panel discussion of a dry-sounding subject: “Improving Healthcare: The Public and Private Sectors’ Shared Responsibility.” ZocDoc’s founder Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Oliver Kharraz, introduced a formidable panel of speakers, in this order: Senator Tom Daschle, Dr. Brad Weinberg, of Blueprint Health, Senator and Dr. Bill Frist, Rich Fernandez, of the Boston-based Steward Medical Group and Dr. Amanda Parsons, of the NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Dr. Kharraz opened with a question on how technology and medical startups, like ZocDoc, will fare in the context of Obamacare and upcoming, uncertain changes in the health care landscape. Daschle was first to answer, and he did so by congratulating the company for its talent and the passion it brings to a turbulent, transformative health care environment. A fit-looking Frist, a former heart surgeon, spoke enthusiastically on opportunities in the private sector. Other panelists chimed in, with words like “value,” “exciting,” “risk,” “entrepreneurial,” “wellness” and “opportunity.”
No word cloud is needed; we were in one. And it’s hard not to be charmed by the brightness of enthusiastic and eager tech-folks who want to make it easier for people to get to doctors they might need. In theory. The ZocDoc space bore no semblance to any hospital or office where I’ve been a doctor or a patient.
At the end of the discussion, one of the panelists noted the group’s apparent agreement on the terrific-ness of the enterprise. Rather than opening the session up to questions from the audience, we were invited to mingle and ask questions of the speakers. If I’d had the chance, I’d have asked a few:
1. Does ZocDoc help people get well, or is it simply a web-based system for procuring appointments with doctors who sign on?
2. What does ZocDoc offer that another health IT program, or portal, can’t or couldn’t provide?
3. How does ZocDoc help patients who don’t have insurance? (OK, it doesn’t; but that’s not the company’s aim)
4. Sure, ZocDoc has value. It helps a small fraction of the population who might be traveling and for one reason or another need to make a doctor’s appointment without having time to ask around or call in, or prefer to just click for an appointment (as I do for groceries), but…Does ZocDoc improve the quality of health care received?
5. How do you reconcile the money being invested in start-ups like these, which make health care “easier” for a few, with the lack of resources faced by real, nearby NYC hospitals closing?
Keep in mind, my concerns are based in my enthusiasm for technology in health care, and for giving providers, aka doctors, a “shot in the arm” of modern-ness. Enter the 21st Century…But there’s no hands-on a patient, no real medicine here. It’s too clean. I’m not convinced the value’s true.
—
*all links accessed 9/19/13
addendum, 9/20: a ZocDoc representative has informed me by email that the fee for providers is based on an annual contract priced at about $300/month, and so I have adjusted the post accordingly. (I’d originally stated that the fee was approximately $300 per year, based on my recollection of what an employee told me during the event.) – ES
Related Posts:
2 Comments
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Every question you would have asked is right on point.
The Internet accelerated fascination with what is essentially plumbing – the many ways we can distribute information electronically – texting, shopping online, email, etc. With our smartphones, we expect access to all information from everywhere, all the time. Most of us have are mesmerized by the snazzy packaging and media hype and lost sight of fundamentals, just as ZocDoc clearly has.
Thank you for reminding us of the kind of questions we should be alert enough to ask of all “innovations.”
Today ZocDoc’s website appears to be thriving. Provided that the questions asked in this blog post are considered, they could continue to grow and become an even more effective medical application.