A healthcare service borne out of a doctor’s quest to treat globe-trotting solo sailors is building up quite a résumé. It could also be an ideal concierge healthcare model for everything from self-insured companies to remote locations.
WorldClinic, based in New London, N.H., “basically started with a cellphone,” says Dan Carlin, a former naval officer and ER doctor who launched the service in 1998 to help sailors on round-the-world races and cruises get emergency healthcare. Along with that phone and Internet link, he equipped each sailor with a first-aid kit (called a Prescription Medical Kit, or PMK) filled with common medications and medical devices that they could use when at sea or in some distant port.
This PMK isn’t the so-called “first-aid kit” of decades past. What once held bandages, tape, first-aid cream and maybe a bottle of aspirin now can include a variety of mobile monitors and devices that, when connected to a smartphone, instantly send vital signs to a clinician miles, if not continents, away. Each kit is customized, containing specific medications and devices assembled by means of a thorough medical history of the user.
Combining the PMK with a promise of instant access – first by phone, then via e-mail, store-and-forward and “some form of Skype,” and now through a secure Internet video connection – helped Carlin build a solid base for his concierge medicine business.
To say that he started his practice with a focus on a niche market would be an understatement – there aren’t that many solo sailors out there. But many of them are wealthy, with families that travel often and live in far-off places, perhaps even on yachts. So Carlin became the personal physician for roughly a dozen families, connecting with them online and making his service available at a moment’s notice.
“I found that I could use the Internet to take care of people really far, far away,” Carlin said. “The lessons are massively transferrable. The unlocking technology is the smartphone.”
Eventually, the head of one of those families turned to Carlin to become the healthcare provider for his company’s executives. That, in turn, led to jobs with other corporations seeking healthcare services for their top brass, and then entire companies. Extend that concept further, and he envisions serving health clinics and other remote locations.
“We even learned along the way how to [deliver] care to a private island in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “It’s been an interesting migration.”
The key, he said, lies in giving them instant access to healthcare. And while most of his clients have been, in his words, “ultra-high net worth,” the concept readily applies to anyone who needs medical treatment.
Andrea Steel, BSN, RN, WorldClinic’s vice president of operations, points out that concierge care models need to focus on the person, not the patient. When you’re delivering care across hundreds if not thousands of miles, she said, the clinician has to establish a quick and effective relationship with the person being treated.
“It’s that human touch that matters,” she said.
Carlin says WorldClinic has even built its own EMR, and is now investing in more health information exchange technology to make the company’s office a high-tech concierge telemedicine hub.
So it’s all a matter of scale. What started as a healthcare service for solo sailors has morphed into one that services hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
“I know I’ve saved them a fortune,” Carlin says. “And I know there’s a lot more that we can do.”
Date: February 4, 2015