Devoting Your Life to Reinventing a Broken System
24:52 Share

I don't care how smart you are, okay? You cannot navigate yourself from american. I care.

My dad had saved fifty thousand dollars, which was all the money he had in the world to great school. And we're like, we have this idea to start the company and we need about fifty thousand dollars. So could we have IT? And he's like and Frankly.

when you think about health care, I don't think we have a minute to waste.

So part of this is that if you actually produce a net Better service IT doesn't mean that you're going to get paid for IT. That was actually the really sort of incredible, painful lesson we learned from the first time that we built a dinner.

They were really built to react to castle y. So they're great at a cute care. When the fit hits the chair, they're massively under invested in other supported in preventing.

So why is that a tech from? Like where does .

tech fit into this at asic sense? Es recent L P. Summer, we brought together hundreds of our limited partners and portfolio founders back together again in los vegas.

The event was truly overflowing, the stories of how founders are chAllenging the status and harnessing technology to make the worlds a Better place. However, there are two industries, whether is no question that lives are literally on the line, public safety and health care. Yet these are also two arenas for technological innovation that, despite being so critical, are also often equally misunderstood.

And that is why we've chosen to open up two of the summer sessions to the public to really show what a Better version of the future can look like, even in industries where technology is not always celebrated. So in our continued coverage of the event today, we discuss the company that is truly rewriting the rules of health care and why two brothers thought that this was required in order to disrupt the industry, set IT before and will stay again. The U.

S. Healthcare system represents twenty two percent of the country's economy. If viewed as a separate entity, IT would rank among the top four economies in the world.

So in this episode, you'll hear from the founders of devoted health, ed park and tod park, taught, by the way, previously served as the chief technology officer of the united states. And together they chat alongside a sixteen z general partner, B J. On day, the two brothers bond over their deep seated commitment to rectify a, quote, broken health care system because, as todd says, it's a combination .

of incredibly important and unbelievably screwed up.

And in today's episode, you'll here, while building their own system from scratch may have been the only way why healthcare is a tech problem and how A I can reshape the system. But first, a story about the american dream.

As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business tax or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any is extensive fund. Please note that a six sixty in the zophernes tes may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a extended 点 com flash disclosures。

I have the distinct pleasure of sharing the stage here with two true odds in the space of tech and healthcare. Eden tod park cool founders are devoted health. So and tod need no introduction.

I will give you one anyways, when I think about what we've seen cure over last two days, we've seen these beautiful examples, how tech is gonna fundamentally improve our lives and change the world. And I can't think of a Better standard bear for this montreal of in todd, and they're playing at the health care. And Frankly, when you think about health care, I don't think we have a minute to waste.

Our us. Health care system is finally broken, and what they're doing is putting together a team of experts with big hearts and brilliant minds to go after what I think is probably warn the biggest problems that our countries facing, how we're going to pay for care and improve axis and improve quality. So naturally, this is not their first radio.

There are sue anch winners, cofounded cathode health and affinity health. And it's our pleasure to be able to partner with you as you build devote IT. I want to be here. So thank you. So to kick you off, when you first tell us a luba about your founder story, how do you get her?

So time I started devoted six years ago together. But the story of the world goes back much further than that, goes back to our parents who came over from korea in thousand nine hundred and sixty nine at the tail end of the civil rights women in the they came to the and search of the american dream life, liberty and the president of happiness. Better life for themselves, for their kids.

So my that came over. He studied chemical engineering at the university, utah, where in a moment of over sharing, you basically said they, in my mom as newly way ground had tied as an accident and like things that I know that and then he went out, was first will drive with the door chemical company, then make her and grab and scrub ing bubble. I remember those was honest, because they were a really big part of my author and became one of the most decorated engineers at document icc, created more pants than almost any other invention.

And where, if he had me in middle michela, as has been described, begin the moment of sharing planned baby. So good. thanks.

he. And that we grew up in central ohio. He was shipped off to a research facility in gram l. Ohio, and that's where we grew up among the corn heals and apple trees of central ohio. And we looked up to people like john Green, who we both got to meet.

Dave time is founder of when these, and we group with this idea, right, this conception of amErica as a shining city on the hill in place where you could do anything. So after we've rope there, we both enough to all these to harvard tide was the good one. You study economics, I said computer science.

And I still remember my advisers saying, computer science. That's total waste of time. Of course you ouldn't that shouldn't do with that.

After college, we decided that we were going to pursue the dream together, right? This idea of creating a company together, this was much to the sugar of our parents. So my parents says, you might guess, were asian.

And there, like, well, one of you should be a doctor and one should be a lawyer. I know which is which, but one of you should be a daughter and one of you should be a lawyer. In fact, my dad had saved fifty thousand dollars, which was all the money he had in the world to send to great school. And we're like, we have this idea to start the company and we need about fifty thousand dollars.

So could we have in he's like, heck, no, right? He didn't say that is that's not speaks, but basically said, no, we are quite persistent, said, could we please have and we still remember what he said he said, yes, i'll give you the money because I love you guys, but I hope you feel fast because you are only two kids. And now both of our eggs are in one basket.

So we started this company, and we've always been obsessed with us. How do you create value by doing good? And for us, has always been about the right care at the right place at the right time.

So our first company was athena health, which started off as a women's health company. Idea was that if you Better care of underserved months during their pregnant y, you could reduce the number of niche days on the back end. And here's the thing, the critical model was successful, but that turns out that the business model was not for IT would take many years to go through exactly why.

But that has to do with the business in nature of the U. S. Health care system. In the process of building that, we actually built a set of internet based technologies to help power that network of women's health practices.

And that was an electronic health record and remind cycle management system, back office systems, that was super successful. We scale that incredibly quickly, took that company public in two thousand and seven. This was the time I P. O. In the next stack of that year.

IT was about the time that my dad likely this and said it's OK become a and we went on I still on board as a possible company executive for the next decade while my brother tid went to dc to serve in the White house. But that's how we got started. During that time, we learned a whole lot more about exactly what's broken with you, al's health care. And we devote a lot of theory about how to fix IT and devotes the result .

yeah and we'll get to that a second but not I D love to double click on one thing so you too could have gone into so many different areas attack. I mean, you, C, T, A, the White house and obama like White health care because .

it's a combination of incredible, important, an unbelievably screwed up right, which for entreprise like catnip. Because what that means is if you can actually go in there and build solution that helpful, you can actually create massive impact and massive value. And it's where you can both create some of those viable companies ever, right? And in the problem of doing so, and really is your core outputs is literally save lives, like literally save lives, dramatically improve lives and pain and suffering text lives extend life and it's just the most exciting kind of mission to be on yeah so add.

you eluded this. Could you tell little more, especially for the non healthcare people in audience, what works and what doesn't work in healthcare?

I think one of the reasons that we we looked at this right is that the way that you hear about sellers in self time, about the standard devices, find an incident gratcher, right? Go out there, find a little problem. Get certain of a little bit of beach had and expand from there.

And that turns out that doesn't work because the fundamental economics of health care make IT such that if you try going that way, at some point someone's going to kill you. So for example, if you have a working die these managment program somewhere along the way, i've talked to hospital CFO who basis said I can't funder die these measure program because it's actually successful in keeping people at the hospital. I am actually reducing hospitalization. But why would I pay for that? When is actually reducing my cor revenge once yeah you're taking money .

away from something.

you're taking money away from someone that and you given point. And so part of this is that if you actually produce a net Better service IT doesn't mean that you're going to get paid for IT. That was actually really sort of increase we painful lesson we learn from the first time that we build the thea.

So what does work?

So what works is that you actually have to find a way to get paid by delivering Better care. And as we have talked about the town, Better care, if you actually delivered IT consistently at the kale, results in the lower cost, but is actually Better care. No one wants go to the hospital.

No one wants invest surgeries, no one wants a lot of things. Sometimes the Better care will cost more, but aggregate that will cost us. And so what does work is if you're able to take the total cost of fair and then do everything you can to make sure that you take care of folks. If you do that well and they use some of those expensive services quest, then you get to profit from and that does work.

Yeah so why is that a tech problem? Like where does tech fit into this?

In order to understand what the best care in the world is, you have to deliver the right here at the right place, at the right time. And that is an unbelievably complex logistical exercise. Health care represents twenty two percent of the us.

Economy as a global economy. U. S. Health care alone is in top four economy in the world.

If you look from a country basis, right there is the us, china, right germany, and then you have U. S. Healthcare as its own economy. It's an unbelievable complexity of dyson's exercise.

And the coordination that's required to make sure that people get the right care at the right place, at the right time is a sort of logistical, technical exercise on the order of the most complex would just seen that you ve ever seen. The problem is that is not set up that way. And so from our perspective was really important is to look at as a fully integrated vertical thing that you could optimize against. And so the question we asked ourselves was what would be required to build some sort of system to make that work ah .

that sounds like basically yet to create your system.

Yeah so yeah, yeah go off from scratch. yes. So how how do you .

build something like that, especially integrating all these different pieces and pieces and sometimes don't really go together like taking healthcare sometimes.

Yeah no, that's right. IT really helps to be a middle age entrepreneurs. You do that. It's taken ad and I by twenty five years to figure out how to do IT and to actually have enough credibility to assemble the dream team and the partners and the resource is to do something ambitions, which is really is we basically built from a altering universe, full stack tech enabled american heth crisis business service because he turns that. That's what you need to do if you want to deliver at scale.

What I just talked about, right the right can right place the right time that basically both drives rather improvements, outcomes and simultaneous as cost a ton. Because as grandma says, a stick in time save duck. I think you get people like front this as well as possible as to out the real expense of hospital, right? So and I realized at the beginning journey that in order to actually deliver on those mission, which is to.

Maca prove health and well being of older americans to start this to everybody by caring for from like family. And because what you want for your families, get them the best care in the world. And that's the right care at this right time.

We realized basically, after twenty five years of learning, mostly hard way, that you had to build this complete alternate universe alth Christan service in order to actually hyper scale that set of results everywhere, right? And so what does that look like? Does that really mean? Basically, we have built people called the virtual tech, able kind of permanent day, a tech pay wide, or the commission of pay provider we call only when health, your solution and IT consists, you pop the harder thing of five ingredients, all of which we deeply massacre stic cally.

We built in the entire health insurance. And because you have to, you have to. And so basically and all kind of describe the half of each layer, right? So five hours, right? There are a number one.

As we built, an entire healthy tions can be from scratch because if you're dependent upon the legacy of the ture, you're ft. Just not going to help you not work with. You're just not aligned to really support getting best care in the world to your patients.

And so we built our own health action service. We control the funding, the data, the Operation is service to orient all the muscles of healthy food company to basically do one thing, folks, and getting you the right care up and that keep you was healthy most possible. The great number two, we built a navigated service called vote health guide, which is a text able, cons years that navigates you through the liquid ball of roiling chaos that many people care.

right? Why we do that? Because I don't care how smart you are.

okay? You cannot navigate yourself through american care. Anyone hears something a patient or care from aging parent can testify.

This I believe we got. So we have a consequence of tech enable garden Angel that navigates you through the system, right? Three is we partner with great local doctors and hospitals, and we love them all.

But there is one very deep problem in the legacy network of doctors and hospitals, which is that for a hoban ous structure reasons, they were really built to react to catastrophe. So they're great at a cute care when the fit hits the chair. They're massively and invested in under supported in preventing catastrophe.

So that's a problem. So then we be built, me number four, which is our own full scale in house malta group, the first truly great virtual care provider for seniors. That doesn't replace your doctor because you joined to want that, rather commends your doctor by delivering seventeen additional major care services to ever needs them, and ninety five percent taliman ticals the rest at common person.

They're collectively preventive care, stitch in time, save time and concedes, like high tech, high touch care that basically keep us well. And health is possible. And finally, last, but definitely at least, and the key to the entire thing is software. software. Is the world right? Yes, three hundred and five is orange go, a software platform that we built like the other.

Some scratch is the first ultra modern software platform, keyboard, running both a health and share and a care provider in one and end system, right? And on top of that, more fundamentally, it's a right care, right place, right time machine from thousands of different sources. Is billion complete picture of you both click on and then analyzing you and then computing what you need next.

And then software platform owns its own health insurance plan. IT owns its own navigated service. IT owns its own virtual career. And just orders those areas, then do all the things, and often really coupled logistic critical sizes, right, to make something very simple happen for you, which is the next right thing.

And the next right thing, including budget stuff that you never thought you need IT, but are collected with this distance and time that save nine and keep as well as possible and out hospital. So we are the first ever to be crazy enough to even try to build what I just said. Yes, we started twice seventeen.

We built the thing and we can't quite believe what's now doing. And you feel likely split the adam, it's like things that out out of control and really good way. So IT delivers net promoter .

score .

for members of seventy seven. wow. So that's apple level higher. yeah. Secondly, five star quality on clinical outcomes, clink outcomes that their own clinical can't believe actually best in the world that may agree, critic.

And the best the world test of homecare, best in the world, so many things. And then IT cuts the cost of medicare. If you actually look a little bit deeper into that, what happens if we actually do more what's called primary care for people, preventive care, then what happens in the us? moral.

And that's a different time that says on hospital costs and special costs and an answers costs. And then we actually give some of those savings back to america, the american government, do we take some of the savings and we actually invest in Better benefits in medicare at the helm level, in Better service, and we keep some as product. And actually the combination of superior benefits, prior service, all entering my sphere care as made us the fastest growing health and transplant and melting vie for seniors by a factor of ten.

In america, we started eight counties in four a with two thousand three hundred member in two thousand years. And we now serve across thirteen american states, one hundred forty thousand members, by the way, in our initial target cycle, which is called medica match market, which is basically outsource metal care delivery by process companies for seniors. That's the four hundred twenty five billion our market. It's still worth that's actually produces a girl because he was population ages to one point five trillion by twenty three part. And then the only I just say is that, look, I mean, we're starting with seniors, but everyone deserves the best health care role and also have begun again, this is all to real and me to get calls from other countries.

yes.

saying, can you come here and basically power my health are system, be my text able helca system as .

a service because they're not going to build or and algo.

they're not going build this.

You look, i'm very confident that know everyone else can build what we built because, a, it's so incredibly hard b, you need to have built at a very particular point in history where you leverage all the learning the decades, but where things are still early enough, right? That you have a tone running, right? Just thirdly, just to be pretty honest, right? Because at the end of day, what you just learn about launch, neuer, ships of people at everything, right? No one else says my brother, right? I mean, no one else of my brother.

I'm not about any human being like my brother, and he'll never says about himself, but he's like the wolfgang omi test mode sardius of health care software, right? He's both one of the best indians on the planet. And secondly, he's spend his entire life professionally in the guts of the american system. And so that intersection of the two, like.

nothing's a mystery, click on that because actually what's amazing is that you are basically the first architecture and the or no does. Yeah, this is kind of amazing. I can do that. And actually, I was so jealous when you mention recently that you're starting to code AI with your own hands and play with these tools.

I play with every I have horb back boxes. And so I love just opening up and looking at things. But I mean, good thing.

I love my brothers as well actually, like when we're grown up and then they still remember tii coming up to me and saying, hey, all my other friends treat their little similes my crap. I promise you i'm going to be the best big brother I possibly can. Is that this word? He's been the best big brother effort. Like IT was a little bit tough when we built a thea, todd literally locked me a closet and said, don't come out until you build software. And i'm like, okay, great mothers do all great .

mothers is OK. So is the basically Johnson bush a and we get into really big trouble. And so I D cycle my brother, who's a hot shot like internet console of time, making six figures out of college, right? And we're in deep, deep, deep.

Do do here. Can you come help? And so he is his job and comes to work for eighteen thousand dollars a year.

Anything to stop, which then worked up for him, right? But we need to build software to run what we're doing. So you literally like works in the calling of a closet.

He really gets in the morning, starts coding, goes back to sleep, gets them in the morning, starts coding, right? So he writes two hundred fifty thousand lines of code himself at a key stretch. The cord I keyboard, designed to the early twice century, actually slow typing down because of about the machine.

So there is actually a form I called borac, which is much faster, literally, the rate at which he could type. What's the great living step on this ability? Create office. So he lita reconfigures keeper, dude, iraq, right? And built like tony stark in a cave in afghanistan and the movie iron man, right in a closet.

And a women's health practice in sani o, he wrote, the first web base was called the time right software ly from one dog sources, right? IT was just like, ridiculous. And he's still cold, by the way. And I know I want to get to that.

What are you doing with A I? So A I is amazing. So number one, I actually think that one of the interesting things about A I and about technology in general is it's leverage given abilities. I probably roll one hundred thousand miles of code so far at devoted personal. So when air comes along, i'm looking at the stuff and you don't know there's a bunch of hype.

So I go to IT like O M G, right? And I say this as someone who is incredibly practice when to coming to the technology like A I is actually the biggest advances, I think, you to technological productivity in terms of the things that you would do on the principle day of the basis since mark I actually invented. So when you look at that, I think of AI and two major buckets, right? As IT replies, what we do now, the first major buckets is administrative.

So somewhere between fifteen and thirty percent of total healthcare cost is waste shuffling paper around. And so when the first places we're working at is how can we use AI to reduce a lot that waste so that people actually take well every day, we have a choice but clean. Do we actually spend this money on care? yeah.

Or do we spend IT on shoffner papers and spend more money on care? right? The first area that we've look at that is how much, if you do on that side. The other area that I I decided by AI is in its ability to help make Better clinical decisions.

If there's a way to make sure that you surface the right decisions at the point of care, by the way, this works Better in value based care, where you get paid for making Better decision created the value based real. Yeah exactly. So if you're in the value based real right, then you're in the situation where the AI, which shall ask you make Better decisions, will actually pay back in states. And so we are really excited about .

running at times. I was asked one last question for you time. Let's take a quick trip to twenty thirty, like six years for now.

So devoted has a AI driven engine, has had deep tech in the very beginning and you're reaching nationwide, maybe worldwide scale at the some degree. What does this mean for patients? What's the world that you're building?

yeah. So basically what that means for patients today and what it's gona mean for patients in twenty thirty? And I think as amazing as the impact of IT has today is we're going to be really ten times as powerful.

IT basically means people are living and are going to live longer, healthier, have your lives. The ones are really mentally right. That means people who are here vers is not right.

And that means families that are whole instead broken. That means people who are fulfilled and well and not suffering. This is what really gets in an I up in the morning.

There is a channel on slack and devoted, which is called membranes. And every day people write stories of the impact we've had on on people's lives and to see lives being so deeply touched and changed and protected and saved. This is the most motivating thing. This is the most profoundness motivating thing and are already doing that at scale. And by twenty thirty, we're going to do IT with the depth and a breath and a power that is way that hacked beyond you where we are now.

Yes, well, let's often go. Let's get this done. Do this right. With that, please join me and thank you, everybody.

If you like this episode, if you meet IT this far, help us show the show, share with a friend, or if you're feeling really ambitious, you can leave us a review at great. This podcast dot com flashed A C cc. Candidly, producing a pocket can sometimes feel like you're just talking to avoid. And so if you did like this episode, if you liked any of our, please let us know.

I'll see you next time.