Many people don’t know that Glen McCracken (one of our co-founders) and I were in the telemedicine business before eVisit. Before we set-out to start eVisit, we worked for another telemedicine start-up that followed the typical model: a patient-directed solution that allowed people to get medical help from qualified, but unfamiliar doctors online.
While I can’t deny there’s a market for these types of solutions, Glen and I found something lacking. What we really wanted to build was a tool for physicians.
There’s an incredible demand for more accessible, affordable healthcare in our country. But Glen and I have always believed that the solution to easing that shortage and improving the quality of care lies in giving our incredibly dedicated, skilled healthcare providers better tools. If you can use technology to empower doctors and bolster the doctor-patient relationship, you strengthen the whole healthcare system. A better physician experience means a better patient experience.
But as many physicians know, that’s easier said than done. As a practicing ER physician, Glen saw first-hand the gap between the technology we use in our daily lives and the tools that were available at his hospital. The disconnect was incredible. The healthcare space has always lagged behind, and most physicians just don’t have access to the best (or, let’s face it, even the mediocre) tech tools out there.
So we started eVisit with a big dream – we wanted to bridge that gap. We brought on our third co-founder Miles Romney as our Chief Technology Officer to really ramp up our technical prowess. Like us, Miles already recognized the need for new solutions that combined the best of tech and healthcare; he actually built the first suite of clinical and patient management tools for wireless devices, a technology later acquired by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of South Carolina.
Bringing Miles on-board was a key step to achieving our main goal — to apply the best trends from the tech field to the healthcare space, and build something that intuitively made physicians’ jobs easier. That meant not only building a software solution that was easy-to-use, or had a sleek, well-designed user interface, but that was made specifically with the typical physician’s workflows and pain points in mind.
That’s when the term physician-first came up. I’d seen the phrase around occasionally, but it didn’t seem to have much momentum behind it yet. I thought, what if eVisit could really own that idea? What if we could put a name and a face on that concept?
We’ve made great strides in the past year, and I’m happy to say I think everything our team has done so far has been powered by our core focus as a physician-first company. We all believe in the power of the doctor-patient relationship. We see that when physicians are more satisfied, patients receive higher-quality care. We know this country’s healthcare gaps would shrink if our physicians had technology that actually supported their clinical skills and made patient satisfaction an achievable goal.
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eVisit’s clinical vision is now led not only by Glen, but also by Dr. Scott Orava, another incredible physician with over 20 years of experience in the field. There’s a lot that’s unique about our team and our company, but I can say that what really sets us apart is the perspective and leadership that these two docs give us. Every decision about our product, every question about practice workflows, every idea surrounding our client success program gets funneled through these guys. Our first question is always: How does this help our physicians? What would make this process easier for the doctor?
That’s our guiding light.
With our beta program well-underway, we’re continuing to refine our product with our ears open. What about our telemedicine solution is working for our physician customers? What isn’t?
The same goes for you. I want to hear from you, as a reader of this blog. What questions do you have about eVisit, about our software, about our content program? How can we make our blog more valuable to you?
We’re all ears. Share your thoughts and help us lead the way as a physician-first company.
