Policy, Startups

15 healthcare startups that should be thankful for Obamacare

Last summer when we were still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the […]

Last summer when we were still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the Affordable Care Act, many people I talked to said that regardless of the decision, the wheels were in motion. Too much had already happened for the Court to get the horse back in the barn.

That may be true, but President Obama and the ACA got everything started on a national scale: the focus on reducing re-admissions, on care coordination, on patient engagement. When would hospitals have started revamping the discharge process or getting serious about follow-up care without the stick of reduced reimbursements? When would doctors and hospitals and long-term care facilities have started really focusing on any of these serious problems without real incentives to do so?

Yes, there are plenty of problems, and yes, all these changes might have happened at some unforeseeable point in the future, but they needed to happen now. Nothing difficult gets done without the right incentives.

So if you are a healthcare entrepreneur, give thanks to President Obama and the ACA this year at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Here are a few of the many healthcare startups that would not exist if the Affordable Care Act were not the law of the nation.

Care coordination
Aidin
CareMerge
PatientSafe Solutions

Reducing readmissions
Future mHealth
RightCare Solutions
WellBe

Telemedicine
ISelectMD
Remote Medical
WellCar

Transparency in cost and information
Credentialed CARE
Curvo Labs
PokitDok

Wellness and prevention
Keas
MaxWell Health
Prevently

[Image from flickr user gammaman]

Veronica Combs

Veronica is an independent journalist and communications strategist. For more than 10 years, she has covered health and healthcare with a focus on innovation and patient engagement. Most recently she managed strategic partnerships and communications for AIR Louisville, a digital health project focused on asthma. The team recruited 7 employer partners, enrolled 1,100 participants and collected more than 250,000 data points about rescue inhaler use. Veronica has worked for startups for almost 20 years doing everything from launching blogs, newsletters and patient communities to recruiting speakers, moderating panel conversations and developing new products. You can reach her on Twitter @vmcombs.

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