Mike Collette
PatientPoint, a company specializing in physician and patient engagement, has brought back its founding CEO. Now with three years of experience as a mentor to tech entrepreneurs, Mike Collette wants to bring some new technology into the patient-physician relationship.
Collette took back the top spot at Cincinnati-based PatientPoint this month, four months after previous CEO Tom McGuinness left to become chief strategy officer of GE Healthcare. McGuinness had been commuting to Cincinnati from the Chicago area.
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Collette actually never cut ties with PatientPoint. He had served as chairman since stepping down as CEO in early 2012. A year later, he became executive in residence at local seed-stage investor and venture development organization CincyTech, where he mentored seven companies in nearly three years. Collette also made some private investments.
“It was a great opportunity to get immersed in some emerging technologies,” Collette said. The company has incorporated new things, such as touch screens, in the five years since Collette stepped down the first time. Now, patient engagement has finally caught up to his vision when he started the company — then called Healthy Advice Networks — in 2001.
Healthy Advice Networks acquired care coordination and revenue-cycle management company PatientPoint in 2012 and took that company’s name.
“Historically, brochures were the primary means of patient engagement,” Collette noted. Then came wide consumer access to broadband Internet and, later, mobile broadband. “Mobile was a game-changer,” Collette said.
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In its early days, the company piloted video delivery of patient engagement to Scripps Health sites in the San Diego area. Back then, Healthy Advice Networks had to deliver video by satellite rather than the Internet.
“We’ve always been at the forefront of new technologies, but it wasn’t always cost-effective,” Collette said. “The one thing that’s remained constant over the years is the relationship between the patient and the physician,” he continued.
PatientPoint’s focus is on giving patients reminders of the things they should be asking and telling their doctors at the point of care and on delivering educational material to patients inside and outside the clinic. “How do we strengthen the dialogue between patients and physicians?” Collete asked rhetorically.
No matter what becomes of the Affordable Care Act under the Trump administration, healthcare is moving away from traditional fee-for-service and patients are becoming more actively involved in care decisions. Similarly, providers are being given financial incentives to include patients.
“It’s an exciting time in healthcare, and I think it’s only going to get more exciting with all that’s changing now,” Collette said. That presents an opportunity for companies like his.
“To be proactive [as a patient], you’ve got to be well informed,” he said.
Photo: PatientPoint
