Silicon Valley’s Plans to Disrupt Healthcare: An Update

Is Silicon Valley going to disrupt healthcare? Perhaps because of the bad news circling large tech companies — Facebook’s data crisis, most prominently — a recent important announcement has been lost in the mix: Apple has made a move in California — and other tech companies are making similar moves — that could fundamentally disrupt healthcare.

Several “stunning state-of-the-art medical centers” in Santa Clara, a few miles north of their Cupertino headquarters, that bear the name AC Wellness, “a subsidiary of Apple, Inc.” have already been constructed. Job listings for AC Wellness are popping up on job boards across California.

Apple isn’t alone, either. Amazon has launched a partnership with JPMorgan Chase and Warren Buffett that’s clouded in secrecy. Uber, true to its nature, wants to compete directly with ambulance services. Verily, a Google-funded concern, is looking at moving into the Medicaid market.

Are we on the way to a future where Silicon Valley runs healthcare — one in which patients are insured by Google, see a doctor at an Apple clinic, take an Uber to the hospital, and get their prescriptions delivered by Amazon?

We’re not there yet, obviously, but something certainly is happening. The managing director at Standard & Poor’s commented that even one year ago, none of this was being discussed. None of this was even in the realm of possibility. Now it is. For more detailed information on these companies’ plans to disrupt healthcare, check out this article on Vox.

Experts are Skeptical

Craig Garthwaite, an economist at Northwestern University, acknowledged the success of big tech companies at disrupting existing industries, but argues that they entered primarily markets where everyone was making money and then blew away the competition. Healthcare is a different beast entirely. Everyone is struggling in healthcare. Just because an industry is underperforming and you have lots of money doesn’t mean you have a strategy to make that industry better, said Leemore Dafny, a Harvard Business School professor to the New York Times.

The next question: how can hospitals prevent themselves from going the way of the Dodo and Blockbuster? MedCom can help.

Reduce Denials, Enhance Revenue, and Sustain Results

MedCom Solutions designs groundbreaking software that improves the processing of medical billing record information, ensures compliance, and leads to increased revenues year after year. Our Chargemaster, Pricing, and Compliance solutions have yielded hundreds of millions in net revenue for healthcare providers across the country.

To learn more, check out our solutions, visit our homepage or contact us today!