Anna Mae Dela Cruz
S10
New business idea
My research professor used to say: "There is nothing new under the sun. You just have to re-search it." I find it exceedingly difficult to come up with business ideas that are completely new (and so I found our discussion on the differentiating invention, innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship rather timely). Once in a blue moon, we have a Steve Jobs who comes up with a PC or an iPod that transforms not only industries, but the way the people around the globe interact and come to know themselves and the world. But even those were not, in a sense, entirely new though they were indeed radical. They were old things modified to fulfill new purposes, combinations of existing things that had never been brought together or been applied to other areas. I have never heard of a "new" idea that came from absolutely nothing or had absolutely no precedent, but perhaps that is unnecessary. At the end of the day the value of an idea lies not in its "new-ness," but in the contribution it makes. Otherwise we spend our days producing novel but worthless things. Perhaps the right starting point is not to think of anything—just anything—that is new, but to think of a reality we want to create, and which perhaps cannot be fulfilled by what today exists.
There is one such reality I can think of. I have a doctor—a doctor whom I am convinced is the best general practitioner in the world. He's known me for nearly a decade now, and has seen me through my ugly duckling years, career decisions, family troubles, name it. He knows me well enough to know I am psychosomatic—that my body expresses what I refuse to express emotionally. To the outside world I handle stress pretty well; I'll be cool as cucumber throughout tough deadlines and private struggles. Then here I come, waltzing into his office with anything from a sore throat to a strange rash to—believe it or not—what looked like German measles and behaved like chicken pox but of course wasn't contagious as it was, like all the rest, stress-related. He's seen what can break me. He was the same doctor who diagnosed my condition a few years ago, saw me go to therapy for more than a year, and seen me recover and grow since. Hence, the first things he always asks me are: "How's your work? Family? Relationships?" Unlike most doctors, he spends at least half an hour just doing a patient history or asking me about everything that could have anything to do with my illness—diet, sleep patterns, work habits, leisure, etc. He knows I'm conservative about taking drugs, and so is he, so he starts me off easy on antibiotics and other medicines then monitors how my body responds before going all the way. He believes primary medicine is about building a good lifestyle, so at times he'll simply insist on more sleep or less worrying, and he knows I won't press him for a magic pill. He'll remind me to let him know how things are going in a few days, but often he texts or calls before I even get to. He'll ask how I am, adjust my medication if necessary, then start off my day with a word of fatherly advice. He always, always takes my calls—or calls back immediately after his meetings. He takes such good care of me you'd think I was some sickly, fragile little thing when in fact I've never been hospitalized in my entire life. There are never any worries about professional fees, billable hours, or too much following-up. It is a professional relationship that is completely unencumbered by business matters—and both he and I are better for it.
That will always be more the exception than the rule if our primary healthcare system stays the way it is. In gist, the idea is a community practice of doctors delivering the best primary and outpatient care possible, at a low cost. Such services do not yet exist in commercial quantities, only in cases where personal and pre-existing relationships belie the doctor-patient relationship—for example, when the doctor is a college director, mentor, and second father to his patient and does not rely on medical practice for his income. It will require a complete overhaul, transforming the way marketing, operations, finance, human resources, etc is done in healthcare. If I had to choose the key areas, I'd say we have to change the way health is financed and to change medical culture (which in the Philippines is an ugly thing). It's a lot of old things combined—payment schemes (including the case rates you asked me about before), human resource strategies, change management tactics, etc that have long been used in other industries but haven't been applied to healthcare. The impact will be tremendous. I could not possibly outline the details of this new idea in three paragraphs. No less than a strategic management paper could do that. I also probably shouldn't share the details of a proposal my team already made for global funding, or for which a local company is recruiting us for. Let me say only this: Innovation and entrepreneurship are not really about thinking of what new things we can come up with, but about what new value we can or should offer, and what new things must take place in order to bring it about. It starts with a vision—a vision of a doctor who is a true partner in health, who knows his patient inside out, offers her the utmost care and attention, and doesn't have to charge an arm and a leg to give it. It's really quite simple: I wish everyone had that kind of doctor. 3
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