Going to be a bit vulnerable here to start, I recently had a calcified growth/mass removed from behind my left knee. Thankfully everything went fine and there were no signs of any malignancy. However throughout this process I realized that there is still so much work that needs to happen to make the end state a simpler experience.

As Within Health's Chief Product Officer, I'm always thinking about problems. Mainly, problems that patients face when trying to access care. My own personal experience led me to experience first hand how navigating the care system snowballs to a host of systemic problems. I’m a firm believer that if we build solutions around patient-centered care, we will solve a number of those systemic issues holding the healthcare industry from making progress.

There's no doubt been an explosion of virtual care through telemedicine resulting from the pandemic forcing that care delivery model. As the world returns to a resemblance of a new normal, virtual care is here to stay, at least in part. However, there is still in-person care that happens and needs to happen for a large portion of patients. 

What's the right balance of virtual care that enables in-person care to be more efficient? 

From a consumer perspective, we are all expecting the same type of experience that we get from everything else that we use on a daily basis. The Gap In Care is defined in a few different ways, but I’m talking about it in the context of the Visit Value Chain. What things need to happen at 4 stages of a patient encounter? And what needs to happen to make moving from one step to the next seamless...

1. Before Visit

2. During Visit

3. After Visit 

4. Between Visits

In my own experience, I had to go from PCP -> Ultrasound -> Ortho (which included in-office X-Ray) -> MRI -> Onco Surgeon -> Core Biopsy -> Onco Surgeon -> Removal Procedure. To orchestrate those steps was fairly cumbersome, even for me. It took 4 weeks to get prior authorization figured out from my insurance. Over 20+ calls with a care navigator (I counted), who was lovely, to schedule next steps, check to see if my insurance would cover this procedure and give me an estimate of what it would cost before I had it (which I didn't get). 

There has to be a better way. How do we create a seamless experience to close the gaps? How do we remove as many barriers to accessing care as possible?

At some level we all want to solve problems that affect personal problems we face every day - building Within Health (seewithin.co) just got a bit more personal for me. I’m excited about the opportunity to build a company solving a headache in that Visit Value Chain.