Three Keys To Healthcare Investing For Impact
Dave Chase, Managing Partner of Healthfundr, an investment crowdfunding site for healthcare companies is well positioned to offer insights for investing in the industry for impact. He’s provided three keys for investors, employers and the healthcare companies and their patients:
Problems breed opportunity: As Peter Diamandis famously said, “the world’s greatest problems are also the world’s greatest business opportunities.” Studying the ongoing collateral damage from wasting over $1 trillion every year (just in the U.S) makes it clear that healthcare’s status quo is the greatest immediate threat to the American Dream. The great news is that the solutions to fix the mess have all been created, proven and modestly scaled, they just haven’t all been brought together. The companies driving that transformation represent a tremendous investing opportunity. Thus, we believe it’s a false choice to think that the proper investing strategy in healthcare requires a trade-off between impact and financial returns.
We can radically reduce costs: I’ve studied the leading employers and unions that recognize that employers are pouring more than enough money to fund a great benefits package and a comfortable require. Unfortunately, accepting the status quo of how we purchase healthcare ensures we get neither. There is now a blueprint for how to do it in a way that thrills both employers and employees/union members. While delivering great benefits, organizations are spending 30-50% less per capita on health benefits. The dollars that would have otherwise been squandered on healthcare are funding great (non-healthcare) benefits, company R&D and community benefit.
Improving conditions for healthcare providers improves outcomes for patients: I’d encourage you to look at the leaders of the Quadruple Aim movement. Unfortunately, more than half of doctors and nurses are showing signs of burnout and doctors have the highest rate of suicide due to how healthcare is operating. This is bad for the clinicians as well as the patients they treat. Fortunately, the leading organizations recognize that optimizing the care team experience naturally leads to a better patient experience. When that happens, health outcomes follow as the patient and care team truly work as a team to achieve the optimal outcome. That, in turn, leads to lower healthcare costs. It’s happened so frequently and in so many different settings, it’s indisputable that it can be done well.
On Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 2:00 Eastern, Dave will join me here for a live discussion about his observations regarding impact investing in healthcare. Tune in here then to watch the interview live. Post questions in the comments below or tweet questions before the interview to @devindthorpe.
You can download an audio podcast here or subscribe via iTunes.
More about Healthfundr:
Twitter: @healthfundr
What is healthfundr? Healthfundr is a virtual venture investing platform that enables large scale investing in the innovative software and services companies that are fixing the deeply-flawed U.S. healthcare system. We combine an online platform with broad tech-enabled expert networks to more effectively source, evaluate, and invest in healthcare’s transformation.

Dave Chase, courtesy of Healthfundr
Dave’s bio:
Twitter: @chasedave
Chase was named one of the most influential people in Digital Health due to his entrepreneurial success and writing along with luminaries such as Eric Topol, Patrick Soon-Shiong, & Vinod Khosla. He speaks to and consults with new ventures inside of established companies & high growth startups. Chase is widely published. The book Chase co-authored won the healthcare Book of the Year in in 2014.
Chase has a penchant for making connections between previously disconnected trends and making them understandable and actionable. Chase is in the development stage of a documentary that seeks to make the indecipherable understandable and demonstrate that there is reason for great optimism that a partnership between doc-entrepreneurs and forward-looking clinicians with individuals (fka “patients”) can dramatically out-perform against Quadruple Aim* objectives compared to traditional healthcare orgs. *The Quadruple Aim is the Triple Aim (improved outcomes & patient experience with lower costs) plus the overlooked 4th Aim — clinician satisfaction critical to improving the current condition where an alarming number of clinicians are overburdened & burnt-out which negatively impacts their lives as well as the individuals they care for.
Chase was the CEO & Co-founder of Avado, which was acquired by and integrated into WebMD and the most widely used healthcare professional site – Medscape.
Before Avado, Chase spent several years outside of healthcare in startups as founder or consulting roles with LiveRez.com, MarketLeader, & WhatCounts. He also played founding & leadership roles in launching two new $1B+ businesses within Microsoft.
Chase is a father, husband & oxygen-fueled mt athlete. His 2014 team placed 3rd in their division & 24th overall (out of 500 teams) in America’s oldest adventure race where Dave took on the Nordic ski leg. Dave was a former PAC-10 800 Meter competitor.
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