Our new company is focused on patient treatment optimization. And that makes some physician owned clinics very unhappy. Why? Because patient visits for a particular patient decrease by 40%. And they are focused on maximizing revenue per patient. But by being more efficient, a clinic's total revenue actually increase, because they can see more patients in a day.
Unfortunately for many patients, their physicians sometimes choose to do what is more profitable than the best cause of treatment. Take radiation therapy for prostate cancer for example. There are two approaches here. The first is branchytherapy. This requires one visit where radioactive seeds are implanted by the cancer. The second is EBRT (external beam radiation therapy) where the patient has 25-45 visits and treatments by external x-ray radiation. Which do you think is more profitable to the clinic? Why are many physicians building EBRT clinics? Yet the outcomes are similar for both treatments.
One of our investors questioned our use of "optimization" because it would alienate those physicians focused on patient dollar yield. I say, good, we don't want them as customers. There are a lot of clinics and physicians who are concerned foremost about the well being of their patients, and those are the people we work with.
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