Two former McKesson sales professionals have taken the leap that many of their peers only dream of. Tripp Matthews and Lisa McFann recently announced the launch of their own startup business. It will be a service business, designed to educate healthcare at home owners and workers as well as professionals in other healthcare sectors. Their educational offerings will take on various forms and they will rely heavily on partners for content.
We spoke with Tripp recently to learn more about what led to this move and what their dreams are for the company.
HCTR: First, congratulations on your courage, starting a shoestring business in this healthcare environment. Let's start with the basics. When did you get started and what are you going to call this venture?
Matthews: Curaport is an online education, information and media platform for the Healthcare Continuum. We are a company dedicated to delivering education and information through multiple media formats. Webinars, podcasts, videos and articles will be our principle forms of regular content. Many of our webinars will come with CEU credits. Other forms include our Vendor Corner, Regulatory Corner, Curated Links, and Quizzes – which are all in embryonic stages of evolution at this time.
HCTR: Give us a glimpse of these evolving service lines.
Matthews: Vendor Corner will be an ‘Angie’s List’ type of service for the Healthcare space for all vendors. We’ll have customer testimonials, our own 5-star rating system, as well as vendor specific infomercials and tools. Regulatory Corner is going to be a regularly updated site for reading the latest on regulatory affairs relevant to all our Business Lines. Curated Links is a really neat feature that pulls in the RSS feeds of some of the top healthcare news sites: Home Health Care News, McKnight’s, Modern Healthcare, and Home Care Technology Report, just to name a few. Quizzes will be interactive, well, quizzes. They will be a semi-fun and informative way to test your knowledge on a myriad of topics in the healthcare space.
HCTR: You mentioned that some of your services are available now. Where can HCTR readers find them?
Matthews: We just scheduled the first of what will become many webinars for May 5. That information is on our web site at curaport.com/webinars but people can subscribe to the podcasts I mentioned on iTunes. They are called "So What, Who Cares?"
HCTR: An odd title, to say the least.
From Curaport.com Lisa McFann has been in the medical industry for over 20 years. Specializing in large physician practices, home health, and hospice on both the provider and software side. Lisa is currently COO of Successful Health and Wellness Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in the physician practice, ACO and health plan industries. Providing education and direction on risk adjustment, documentation, the ACA, and, most importantly, transforming healthcare from a sick care model to a preventive and wellness model, guaranteeing chronic care and transitional care management excellence. Curaport is Lisa's dream come true. Lisa Received a Masters of Science in Nursing Education from the University of Alabama. She is also a Certified Executive Health Coach and assists in designing health and wellness programs for private sector corporations.
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Matthews: Well, it's actually a reference to our unofficial company motto. "So What, Who Cares?" comes out of our belief that our lack of formality — we call it our preponderance of directness — will be critical to our success. If Lisa and I cannot answer that question, then it does not go on the site. Period. It is about quality over quantity. That could perhaps slow our growth rate, but so be it.
There's a presidential candidate who has tapped into something raw in America by speaking without a filter. We believe we can tap into a need, felt but not recognized, of the persons running healthcare organizations by providing them with stripped down, give-it-to-me-straight information.
HCTR: If our readers are going to give your startup a serious look, they are going to want to know who you are and why you are doing this.
Matthews: People can read about us on our web site but here is the abridged version. Lisa and I met during our tenure at McKesson. We officially launched the Curaport web site on March 10 of this year but had been working on it since early December. We both believe that, in the Healthcare space, the availability of information is at an all-time high. At the same time, individuals in need of this information are busier than ever. I cannot remember the last time I had a conversation with someone in a home care agency, long term care facility or physician practice that felt like they had all the education they needed.
So we saw the need for a third-party platform that would bring together experts to educate the masses in one, clean platform. The best analogy I have is Netflix. Sure, now they create some of their own content, but most of what they have is purchased from other sources and redistributed from one convenient location. We want Curaport to be the healthcare continuum’s Netflix, while recognizing that healthcare's ESPN or HGTV equivalents are still needed and valued. This is our "secret sauce." Netflix has TV and movie producers; we have our Affiliates. These are the individuals who will be delivering the majority of the content on our site. We are so thrilled with our early partnerships and are in discussions with many more.
Another reason we did this is because much of the education and information that is disseminated seems to be very highbrow. There are too many marketing buzzwords, acronyms and language pageantry – and not enough simple, direct, consumable information. It feels like, sometimes, in some of the current education channels and sessions, half the audience would secretly like to raise their hand and say, “Umm, what in the world are you talking about?” Not because the speaker is uninformed, but because many times they are teaching quantum physics when simple Algebra would suffice.
HCTR: That sounds pretty altruistic. Is making the healthcare industry better your only motivation?
Matthews: There is a personal level. Lisa and I had both been employees for our entire careers, and fairly opinionated ones at that. Now, this does not in any way denigrate our previous shared employer, McKesson. In fact, I believe we were both inspired as individuals by our boss and my mentor, Bob Dean. Still, it seemed like the right time to have a go at doing something that we would have more direct control over. I was a pitching wedge away from being 40 years old, and I didn’t want to wake up and be 47 years old having never at least taken a chance to do something like this.
Curaport.com
©2016 by Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Tim Rowan's Home Care Technology Report. homecaretechreport.com One copy may be printed for personal use; further reproduction by permission only. editor@homecaretechreport.com