For the past nine years, I have been involved in building a
company, Accolade, dedicated to experiencing the health care journey through
the eyes of each unique individual and family who are in need. Starting with a one room office, and a small
team led by Tom Spann, our CEO, we spent years finding solutions to the
problems inherent in experiencing illness in an attempt to make that journey as
simple, and as stress free as humanly possible – all that with the knowledge
that there is no more stressful time than when you or a family member is
ill. In addition to medical and
insurance knowledge, we brought into the equation information on decision
science, the psychology of persuasion and behavioral economics and created a
coherent set of processes that we could manage while making it seem to the
people we helped as if it were effortless.
We created simplicity during extremely complex and emotional times for
people. This took immense work and
creativity as there is no more difficult task than creating simplicity out of
the chaos that is often experienced when ill.
It meant rethinking how to engage people and how to create the type of
trust that allows the right type of help to be offered and to be accepted. It meant understanding a person’s need for
autonomy and to be seen as unique rather than as a disease or a
demographic. It meant understanding that
the experience of being sick is more than biology and insurance benefits but is
also emotional, social, financial and even spiritual. It is intensely personal for each person
affected and our methods and procedures had to find commonalities while
recognizing the segment of one that each person is.
Ultimately we created a new profession – the profession of
Health Assistant and the internal mechanisms to support that profession. The Health Assistant has to be an expert
problem solver, a relationship builder and to be conversant in the language of
medicine, finance, social work and insurance benefits. He or she has to be team oriented in order to
pull in their expert colleagues, whether nurses, doctors, psychologists,
pharmacists, social workers, insurance experts or even attorneys when needed
for a particular issue. The
communication links and the information have to be at each Health Assistant’s
fingertips in real time in order to keep it simple, real and humanistic. It can’t be scripted or too rote but it must
be performed with a certain rigor that is behavioral and scientifically based
and consistent across health assistants.
It must follow process but not be a slave to process.
We started out with the belief that this service would not
only help and delight people, but it would save money in aggregate. Taking the fear out of so many decisions that
drive people to ask for unnecessary tests and services and helping influence
people towards the right care seemed to us to have the potential to save money
while doing the right thing for those in need.
We proved that to be true as well.
Time and again, when we studied populations with pilot populations
versus control populations, keeping everything else the same, savings were
documented that exceeded even our initial hopes. There were even indications of improved
quality of care from decreased readmissions, increased medication compliance
and increased use of preventive care. At
one point, one of our esteemed Board of Directors said, “You guys have
discovered penicillin!”
Those types of results do bring growth. Accolade is now a company of over 700 people
with three offices around the country and continues to grow. A new CEO has been named and a new team is
being put in place to bring Accolade to the next level of growth. As such, I am taking my leave but remaining
as a shareholder, an advisor and a supporter.
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