Rebuilding Healthcare, From The Ground Up

These are exciting times for healthcare innovation, with technology that is empowering patients through advances like health and fitness trackers, IoT in-home medical devices, and collaborative care platforms. At altr, we’ve been lucky to work with a number of companies who are pioneering care outside the traditional clinical environment and realizing outcomes that will change the standard of care.

But what about primary care? Despite all of these technological advances there’s still a need and desire for time when patients and physicians can meet in person. And arguably one of the most valuable innovations in primary care would be to double-down on just that: time. Yet the way in which most hospitals and clinics are reimbursed places more importance on their volume of visits than their impact on outcomes, meaning that time for doctors and patients to meet is increasingly scarce.

To realize the potential benefits of in-clinic consultations and give doctors and patients the time they need to help people live their best lives, you need to rebuild healthcare from the ground up.

You need a complete, team-based approach that brings together physicians, health coaches, behavioral health specialists and others, personal caregivers that take a holistic approach to a patient’s life and well-being.

You need to create an atmosphere where people feel safe, understood, and always welcome to bring questions and raise concerns in order to anticipate and deal with small problems before they become big issues.

You need a new type of relationship with insurers, one that isn’t built around volume, but built on value.

Rebuild healthcare? It’s a big challenge, but it’s a challenge that Iora Health has taken on and it’s one that Iora, through its network of Iora Primary Care offices, is proving can be overcome.

Yet while Iora is changing the way primary care works, people searching for a new primary care doctor consistently look for the same things. So when altr and the team at Iora set out to redesign the prospective patient-focused websites for Iora Primary Care, we still had to build an experience that served people’s perceived needs from healthcare providers today, while showing that they should and could expect much more. We had to provide simple, intuitive paths to answer the questions people regularly use to evaluate any Primary Care office: Who are the doctors? What is their background? Where is the practice located? Can I get there easily and cost-effectively? When is the office open?

But in answering these basic questions, we designed the site to suggest that there is much more to the story at Iora Primary Care: one that is focused on not just doctors but also a larger care team that includes Health Coaches, a behavioral health specialist, and others who are fully dedicated to doing what’s best for each patient. The practice’s location is only one part of its connection to the community; a connection that includes classes, events, and partnerships with local organizations focused on older populations and the issues that concern them. The office’s operating hours are only part of a larger story about 24/7 accessibility and, most importantly an organizational perspective on the value of time with a patient that means that patients are never rushed while in the clinic.

Rebuild healthcare? Other healthcare providers may peddle the idea in their marketing, but few actually deliver. Iora Primary Care does. And our team at altr is proud to have been a part of that effort.

Check out the new sites (and maybe find a new Primary Care provider?) at www.IoraPrimaryCare.com

Thanks to our friends at Gildaymonster Productions for the video production work, The Square Marketing for leading development, and of course to the great team at Iora Primary Care for collaborating with us.