Aspire Ventures talks transparency, convenience for Clio Health Lancaster

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Uber has done it for taxi services, and Airbnb has done it for hospitality.

But Sam Abadir couldn’t help but ask – why hasn’t anyone done something similar in health care?

That question, and the realization that building software was no longer enough, led Abadir to pursue Aspire’s newest project, Clio Health Lancaster.

Clio Health Lancaster is a four-story, 140,000 square-foot building that will house the newest technology health care has to offer in specialties such as orthopedics, physical therapy, imaging and wellness.

Abadir believes Clio Health represents the next wave of software companies: They won’t simply be developing new technology, they will also be creating the spaces in which it will function.

“We have to engineer the experience with the software,” Abadir said.

And so Aspire has set out to engineer a new health care experience for patients in Lancaster County.

Creating Clio Health

Imagine scheduling a doctor’s appointment through an app, and appointments being available outside of traditional business hours.

Now, imagine that when you go to the doctor, you’re told what service you need, and its price.

That’s the vision that Todd Lord has for Clio Health. Lord is the venture’s CEO.

He’s hoping that an improved patient experience will prompt more people to take the time to visit the doctor more often than when they are sick. Over time a healthier population should drive down health care costs for everybody.

As such, Clio Health isn’t focused on acute care. It’s looking at specialties that touch everyone: weight, nutrition, skin care, physical assessments and therapy. Clio Health will also look to partner with local businesses that want to bring these specialties, using advanced technology, to their employees.

And the most important thing will be transparency, to show the connection between quality of service and cost of service, said Joe Frank, CEO of Smart Health Lancaster, an Aspire venture that functions as the project developer of Clio Health.

To demonstrate the need for transparency and convenience, Abadir cited a study showing that households with an annual income of $75,000 or more are most likely to avoid going to the doctor.

“The convenience of it is so bad, even people with money won’t go to the doctor,” Abadir said.

But with innovation comes challenges. Many health insurance companies, for example, don’t cover the technologies that will be used to treat patients at Clio Health.

To remedy that, Clio Health’s leadership team is working on agreements with insurers to figure out what a new type of payment model might look like, Lord said.

And with another round of health care changes on the horizon, Abadir, Lord and Frank are hoping that Clio Health will be part of the solution, because of its emphasis on transparency.

And by trying something new, Clio Health aims to change the way physicians, insurers and patients see health care.

“Right now we don’t see a real analog. What we see in the market — urgent care centers and a responsive model of care, not proactive management,” Abadir said.

So far, everyone they’ve talked to has been on board with helping to create a new patient experience.

“Everybody is really motivated to get patients to get better,” Abadir said. “But yet there’s this expectation that because it’s always sucked, it always will.”