But perhaps the most interesting and potentially groundbreaking company created in connection with the Affordable Care Act is Aledade, a start-up founded in 2014 by Farzad Mostashari, a doctor and technologist who was the national coordinator for health information technology at the Department of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration.
Aledade, which has raised about $75 million from investors, has an agenda so ambitious it sounds all but impossible: Dr. Mostashari wants to reduce the cost of health care while improving how patients are treated. He also wants to save the independent primary care doctor, whose practices have been battered by the perverse incentives of the American health care system.
And here is the most interesting part: His plan is working.
A few weeks ago, I visited two primary care practices in southeast Kansas that have worked with Aledade for more than a year. Their operations had been thoroughly remade by the company. Thanks to Aledade, the practices’ finances had improved and their patients were healthier. On every significant measure of health care costs, the Aledade method appeared to have reduced wasteful spending.
“The whole idea is to align incentives between society and doctors and patients,” Dr. Mostashari said, adding that Aledade has helped reduce hospital readmissions and decrease visits to specialists in many of its markets. “We’re reducing unnecessary and harmful utilization and improving quality of care.”
Of course, such promises are not new at the intersection of health and technology. Many companies have made big bets and blown up — among them Theranos, the lab testing start-up, which turned out to have been more puffery than product. Aledade faces its own share of hurdles, including whether its investors can ride out a long and costly expansion before it starts to realize any big paydays.
Still, its plan — which mainly involves using software to achieve its goals — looks promising.
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