A Start-Up Suggests a Fix to the Health Care Morass
Such visits are a gimme for the health care system — they have been proved to reduce hospital readmissions (which are extremely costly),
and patients say they find them valuable in navigating the health care system.
But perhaps the most interesting and potentially groundbreaking company fostered by the Affordable Care Act is Aledade, a start-up founded in 2014 by Farzad Mostashari, a doctor
and technologist who was the national coordinator for health information technology at the Department of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration.
And because these visits are so effective at lowering overall health care costs, Medicare pays doctors a higher rate to provide such care — meaning
that primary care doctors can make money by following Aledade’s alerts.
As a result, many primary care physicians — who often see themselves as a kind of quarterback who calls the shots
on a patient’s care — have no easy way to monitor a patient’s meandering path through the health care system.
To do all this, Aledade — which now operates in 15 states
and has relationships with more than 1,200 doctors — has had to become more than a software company.
There is a regulatory angle: The Affordable Care Act added tens of millions of people to the health care market,
and the law created several incentives for start-ups to change how health care is provided.
Aledade, which has raised about $75 million from investors, has an agenda so ambitious it sounds all
but impossible: Dr. Mostashari wants to reduce the cost of health care while improving how patients are treated.