Start-up’s focus is wellness
RemedyNow offers integrative medicine in patient homes
Aamir Siddiqi and Danish Siddiqui, former associate professors with the Aurora University of Wisconsin Medical Group, have seen firsthand the shortcomings of the U.S. health care system.
Like many doctors and other clinicians, they have long been frustrated by the fragmentation of care, the lack of coordination and the limited time allotted for patient visits.
Siddiqi and Siddiqui have set out to create a model that helps change that — one that focuses on the patient, or, more specifically, the person.
“There is a difference between patients and people,” Siddiqi said. “When you think about patients, you think about disease. When you think about people, you think about lives.”
RemedyNow, a start-up company founded by the two physicians, will provide primary and urgent care as well as integrative medicine, such as acupuncture, nutrition counseling, health coaching and other services, in people’s homes.
The company is just starting, but similar models have taken hold in other cities.
Two of the best known are Pager, based in New York, and Heal, based in Santa Monica, Calif., that provide urgent care and other services that can be scheduled using mobile apps.
The companies have been likened to “Uber for docs.”
“It’s black-bag medicine with a twist,” said Travis Singleton, senior vice president of Merritt Hawkins, a physician search company and part of AMN Healthcare.
Heal in California reportedly has raised $40 million, including $27 million this fall, from investors.
RemedyNow hopes to take the model a bit further with its focus on integrative medicine and wellness — though it hopes to get its footings by providing urgent care on demand.
The care will be provided by a physician or nurse practitioner.
The cost is $225 for an urgent-care visit and $150 for a primary-care visit — a price generally competitive with urgent-care centers and far less expensive than a hospital emergency department.
It also will offer what are known as televisits for $75. That’s a bit higher than competing telemedicine services, including those offered by health systems. But Siddiqui said that RemedyNow can follow-up immediately with an urgentcare visit.
The cost of other services, such as nutrition counseling or acupuncture, will vary.
RemedyNow will draw on a stable of part-time physicians, nurse practi-
tioners and other health care providers.
“The cost of brick and mortar is being eliminated,” Siddiqui said. “It is virtual system. That’s the beauty of this.”
The model also appeals to physicians and nurse practitioners who want to work part-time.
But RemedyNow is based on the idea that the care provided by a physician or nurse practitioner is only one piece of health.
“I am only one-tenth of the solution,” Siddiqui said.
A patient may benefit more at times, for example, by seeing a nutritionist than a physician — ideally in the patient’s home, where the nutritionist can see what is in a refrigerator.
RemedyNow — which will offer a service that it calls “wellness kitchen” — envisions nutritionists going to markets with a patient.
Joan Kiely, a nurse practitioner who works for RemedyNow, knows well that changing behavior is difficult and that patients have to take responsibility for their own health.
“That’s what we want to help them do,” she said.
Siddiqui said people need support, guidance and structure. “And it can’t be done in a 15-minute office visit,” he said.
Siddiqui is director of women’s health at the Watertown Regional Medical Center and previously was an associate professor and director of the obstetrics and gynecology residency program for the Aurora UW Medical Group.
Siddiqi oversees clinical services at the Norris Health Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and previously was an associate professor and the associate director of the familymedicine program at Aurora UW Medical Group.
RemedyNow will face its share of challenges.
One is making people aware of the company, and that won’t be easy for a start-up company with limited funds.
The new company also is unlikely to get referrals from physicians who work for health systems, though it could get referrals from some physicians who have patients needing intensive management of their care.
Another challenge is RemedyNow’s services, at least initially, will not be covered by health insurance, and people expect insurance to pay for health care — though Siddiqui noted that many people pay for acupuncture or massage therapy on their own.
People can pay for the company’s services through a health savings or flexible spending account. The services also could be reimbursed by an insurance company as an out-of-network expense under some health plans, though the reimbursement typically would be a fraction of the cost.
RemedyNow eventually may offer a subscription or membership model.
One potential market is contracting with health insurers or employers to help manage the care of complex, high-cost patients — people who fall into that 5% of the population that accounts for 50% of health care spending.
That model holds potential, said Singleton of Merritt Hawkins.
Avoiding just one hospitalization or even emergency department visit would offset the cost.
Advances in telehealth and other technologies are allowing more care to be provided in the home, Singleton said. They range from tests for sleep apnea to rapid tests for hemoglobin A1C, a test used to monitor blood sugar, and strep.
Small companies can move faster to make use of those advances.
The goal, in some ways, comes down to a basic question.
“If I am a patient, what would be the best kind of care for me?” Siddiqi said.