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Dua and Desai were on their way home from the emergency room, where their seven-month-old son had been examined for a mild fever and a rash per their pediatrician’s urging. They’d waited there for nearly five hours, only to learn that their son’s condition had returned to normal.
“Why can’t there be something like Uber for doctors?” Renee Dua asked her husband, Nick Desai.
Whether she knew it or not, Dua’s question would be the first step in the development of Heal, an app-based service for on-demand house calls aiming to reform the medical industry. While countless startups describe themselves as “the Uber of X,” the snowclone is actually an accurate description for Heal: a user simply requests a doctor and is automatically charged after the service has been performed.
What the startup emphasizes the most is certainty: flat rates, arrival time guarantees, and satisfaction insurance (none of which is promised in traditional medical institutions). Each doctor’s visit costs $99 flat (Dua asserted that no hidden fees or extra charges can be incurred), which she says ultimately costs less than the average doctor’s visit, accounting for co-pays and commuting costs. Once requested, the doctor is guaranteed to arrive at the patient’s home within an hour. If a patient isn’t satisfied, Dua said, she’ll receive a full refund; someone from Heal calls every patient an hour after the visit to gauge her level of satisfaction.
While most on-demand service startups offer an integrated rating system for customer feedback and reviews, Dua said Heal gets feedback from every patient during its calls following the appointment, generating a more detailed understanding of patient needs. “In our follow-up surveys, over 90 percent of our customers have given us an average satisfaction score of 9.75 out of 10 and we're thrilled by that,” she said.
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Dua said Heal hosts a network of over 30 doctors, about 60 percent of whom are pediatricians and 40 percent of whom are family practice. The service matches patients with one doctor it deems best-suited for the call, rather than giving the patient multiple doctors from which to choose. However, she said, patients will be given more decision-making power as the app evolves.
“You specify if you need a doctor for adults or for kids, and we send the closest matching doctor to your house,” she said. “For adults we have internal medicine and family practice doctors. For kids, we have pediatricians. Soon, we'll add the ability to see the same doctor on subsequent Heal visits and also to request a specific doctor.”
Heal has raised a $1.5 million angel round, Dua said, attracting investors ranging from former Dodgers owner Jamie McCourt to Lionel Richie. With that funding under the seven-person startup’s belt, she hopes to expand services to Downtown LA and the South Bay and to “cover a majority of Los Angeles by May, 2015.”
“Longer term, we want to bring more and more services to the home,” she continued. “Medicine today is broken for patients and doctors. I am both and I want medicine to get back to its roots. Let doctors focus on healing and patients have long-term relationships with their care providers. In doing so, I believe we can build a thriving business for everyone involved.”
