Private health reform is MinuteClinic for everyone

With systemic health reform apparently dead, the topic is now in the hands of entrepreneurs like Jay Parkinson.

Best known for the Health 2.0 system Hello Health, which is driven by a medical care platform called Myca, Dr. Parkinson has now launched a Web design firm called The Future Well.

"I realized medicine sucks," he told a 2008 conference. (The picture is a still from that performance.)

Hello Health is Internet-based concierge medicine. There's a fixed fee that gets you your check-ups, but it also gets you your health data and an ongoing, online relationship with health professionals.

"Think of it like ZipCar," he said.

That's one route to reform. Scaling-out new primary care systems that give people data, and access to expertise, while improving doctors' productivity and guaranteeing revenue streams, may prove a far more efficient use of an employer's health care dollar than a conventional insurance plan.

That's fine for wellness and primary care. But what happens when you actually need help?

Forcing patients to shop for care with high-deductible health plans, and franchising efficiency in urgent care through things like Minute Clinic, seem to be his answer.

As Parkinson wrote for Business Week recently, high-deductible plans are coming, which will transform medicine by making consumers cost-conscious on health products and services.

Franchised systems -- a Starbucks of health care he calls it -- can deliver transparent pricing, and a branding message that cuts through the problems of shopping, just as in other industries.

Don't meddle with traditional health care, he advises. Instead, innovate around it and, in time, replace it:

Differentiate and go straight after the cash-paying consumer with elegant experiences that are human-centric, simple, data-driven, and connected to the platform. Create a network of effective, convenient solutions for simple problems. Meet 90% of the health needs of 90% of the people.

Once the economic pillars are kicked out from under them, he says, the other players will be forced to compete themselves, giving patients access to prices on drugs and procedures.

Can it work? For the upper middle class, I think it can. Given the reluctance of the market to move, and the impossibility of making it move through politics, the best we can hope today is that Parkinson becomes medicine's Sam Walton. Soon.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com