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 Welcome to this Week in Health, it influence where we discuss the influence of technology on health with the people who are making it happen. My name is Bill Russell. We're covering healthcare, c i o, and creator of this week in health. It. A set of podcasts and videos dedicated to developing the next generation of health IT leaders.

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You can do it. Share it with peer, share it on social media. Follow our social accounts, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube. Send me feedback at Bill at this week in health it.com. Love your feedback and subscribe to our newsletter on the website. Uh, one last thing before we get to our guests. We have two new services this week, health, uh, insights, which is developed for, uh, people to develop their career.

Uh, check that out on our website this week, health.com/insights and a staff meeting, which is a way to introduce your staff to new concepts. And to kick off your staff meeting with a dynamic conversation this week, health.com/staff meeting, no spaces. Okay. Today I'm joined by, uh, Manoj. Manoj. How do you spell, how do you say your last name?

I don't want to, I don't wanna butcher it. . Thanks. It's Jabari. Okay. Manoj Javari, the co-founder and c e o of Higher Medical, uh, a healthcare tech startup based in Cleveland, Ohio. Uh, which is how we got connected through, uh, our friend Charlie Lo Lowe, who's also a, uh, Cleveland native and entrepreneur in that area.

And I guess you guys, you guys have known each other for a little bit. Yeah. Um, great to be here with you, bill. We've known each other for, for a bit and, uh, several years now. And he's actually, uh, an advisor to Higher Medical as well. Okay. And now he's doing his, he's doing his, his blockchain thing now.

Yeah. And it's, it's an amazing concept. Um, I've seen some of the early, uh, alphas and betas of their software and we've actually been meeting with his team, um, on some potential collaborations as well. So some really exciting stuff that they're doing. Yeah. So we're gonna, we're gonna talk about higher medical.

It'd be interesting to see, you know, given what you're doing, Um, you know, his, his, his blockchain technology. I, I don't wanna get you in trouble by you revealing anything, you know, that you've seen from him. 'cause he was, he was a little coil on the podcast of sharing things, but he was, we talked a lot about blockchain and, and it as a foundation for, um, for a lot of really cool, uh, new use cases within healthcare.

So it's pretty exciting. Yeah. So higher, uh, higher medical. So you, that's, that's where you're at now. You're co-founder and c e o, uh, prior background with, uh, innovation in Fortune 500 companies. And, uh, faculty member at Case Western Reserve University as well, where you taught innovation management and, uh, marketing strategy.

Are you still doing that? You still teaching? Uh, not teaching anymore, just full-time, higher medical all day, every day. So, , it, it, it's, it's kind of, kind of hard to keep that balance and keep doing, uh, other things, isn't it? Once you really, um, turn your sights onto being a, uh, an entrepreneur and, and really making it happen.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm fortunate that I can. Dedicate that focus to, to just higher medical right now. Cool. Well let, well, let's, let's dive into this. 'cause I, it's a really fascinating, uh, you know, direction that you guys are going. So, higher Medical was founded to really disrupt in, in, in a good way the, uh, the, the broken process of, uh, freelance healthcare staffing that currently exists.

And, uh, so give us a little bit background of higher medical. Um, yeah. And now I'd just like to go into, you know, just really your thought process from a, um, from an entrepreneur standpoint, how you got there, how you plan to scale and those kind of things. Yeah, absolutely. I'll kind of give you the genesis story, uh, in a nutshell.

Um, so my background was engineering, then management consulting, and I, a little bit fell into startup entrepreneurship and startup technology, entrepreneurship to be more specific by accident. Um, it's not like I set out to get into healthcare. I created a healthcare startup and, um, I had a, I had my own consulting company.

I was an entrepreneur for sure, but the whole startup game is something of a completely different nature. And, um, what actually happened is while I was, um, having my own independent consulting company, I was looking for ways to bring startup culture and processes into big companies. So I went to a startup competition and I actually participated in it.

And coincidentally, one of the people who was pitching there was Dr. Ferris El Kadir, who was pitching an idea not higher medical, and I didn't know Ferris. Um, I had never met him in my life and I, I liked the idea he was talking about though. And I ended up working with him for 54 hours, unlike one of these Build a business hackathons.

And through that 54 hours, we kind of gelled and became friends and we ended up winning that competition. So we started working on that together and. Fast forward. We later presented that idea to Matthew Miller, who's now a venture partner at Jumpstart in Cleveland. We didn't end up taking that idea forward, but we had another idea in our back pocket, which was born out of the pain that Ferris actually was experiencing firsthand trying to do freelance work or locums work is what they sometimes call it as a side gig to make extra money because he was a, a fellow at Cleveland Clinic.

There's a complete lack of visibility between. The doctor and the hospital. Um, and that, that, um, you know, that lack of visibility, that lack of transparency is actually something in our opinion that agencies want to maintain. Um, their markups are very high. An agency's typical markup on the doctor's rate is 40 to 60%, sometimes more.

More. And they'll often negotiate or haggle is what we call it with the doctor to bring them down. There's a lot of discrimination actually that occurs. In this area as well against women, minorities, et cetera, bring down their rate and then keep as much markup as they can for themselves. And then of course, they try to charge the hospital as much as they can as well, um, in this market, um, finding a freelance physician, finding a locum physician typically happens through an agency.

That's the predominant model in today's world. Nine times out of 10, And, um, you know, job postings are put out there, but the rate and the exact location is not revealed in the job posting. 'cause the hospital that the agency doesn't want them to do an end around and cut them out of their, um, juicy margin.

Right. And we just, we just looked at all of these things and we just felt it was just wrong and it was time for a more modern solution. You know, you don't, you don't haggle a rate with your Uber driver. You don't haggle a rate with your Airbnb host. Uh, you don't haggle the rate on Travelocity. All of these industries that I'm talking about have been disintermediated.

The, the middleman has been removed. And we said, well, why doesn't this happen in healthcare? You know, why can't this happen? Our, our hypothesis was that it can happen. Um, and maybe no one has had the right team or the resources or whatever it might be to kind of, you know, make this happen and fight this battle.

Uh, we did understand later that there were some, some companies that, a couple companies really, that were doing this and looking at, um, really disrupting the space. But at the time, um, we, you know, we thought, hey, maybe we're the only ones out there trying to do this. And, and we, we embarked on this, uh, journey and we ended up picking up multiple advisors along the way, Charlie being one of them.

Um, and we ended up, uh, in that process I met Oliver Culls, who's our Chief Technology Officer. And then also, um, about a year over a year ago, I met Sunil Pania, uh, Dr. Sunil Pania, who is. Um, a very experienced physician and a practice manager and doc. And then, uh, Spencer Leadman, who, uh, also lives in Florida.

So, and Spencer are good friends. Spencer's our chief operating Officer now. They initially started off on a part-time role and then they just saw the logic of what we're doing and became so excited that they ended up joining as co-founders and executives. So I tell that because it, it definitely takes, uh, a village and, um, and, you know, we, we have a great

Balanced, I would say an experienced team of five co-founders and executives, and two of them are doctors, two of them are MBAs. Uh, you know, we have, we have a mix of different personalities and, and experiences. We have experienced advisors who have been there, done that. Even in the case of Charlie, he is, he's created and sold healthcare IT companies, specifically i b m, you know, our explorers, and then became I B M Watson Health.

Um, so that's kind of the genesis of how we, we created this company and it, it, the seed of it started two years ago and the goal really was to make this process of freelance positioning finally make it easy and reward. So here's, so here's what I'm gonna do. So you just laid it out. And here's what my listeners really want me to do.

They want me to take you through the process. So great. You have a great idea. You found some partners, you pulled it together. I assume you got some funding, right? So you have some funding partners as well. So now we're gonna take it from, we have a great idea. It, it seems to solve this, this problem. Let's, let's take it all the way through.

So let's start with you. You created a digital marketplace. It doesn't sound like. Um, you know, this is like sort of the hallmark of digital business. Uh, in general. You cut out a middleman, you, you make the process a lot easier really for both sides. More transparent for both sides, make the transaction a lot easier for both sides.

Um, what are the things that stand in the way of, of you growing the business or scaling the business at this point? Um, I mean, I think. One of the biggest, I wouldn't call it a, a barrier, but I think it is, there's an education process that has to take place with hospitals. Oh, of the hospitals, not the physicians.

The physicians sort of get it, I think, I mean, I think they are warm and eager to adopt this type of more modern solution. I mean, our, our doctors, our users is what we call them users, and then we call the hospitals the customer. So our users are begging for this kind of solution. And they say, well, you know, we get comments from people saying, oh, finally, you know, finally I get to experience, um, being a freelance physician in a way that is not ni mind numbing and where I have to fill out papers by hand and I get a big packet of stuff in the manila envelope and I have faxes.

And, um, I have to do everything in kind of a, a very old school kind of way for no reason and. You know, you guys are speeding up that process and you're also allowing me to interact directly with the hospital and see the rate and see the location, and you're just, you're treating me in a way where you're not even worried about me cutting you out because your markup is so much lower than a typical agency.

Our is a 20% markup across the board. Um, and we, you know, we have agreements on both sides, but. Our, our philosophy is not, oh, we need to stop people from cutting around us. Our philosophy is make the platform and the experience so easy that people don't think about moving around you. You know, you don't think about getting the, the cell phone number of your Uber driver because it's a pain.

It's so easy to use Uber. They say, I'm not gonna get my guy's cell phone number. Right, right. Or I'm not gonna get my Airbnb host's cell phone number. And their fee is also follow a similar structure. They're not so exorbitantly high. Right. So you're, so you're making the credentialing process that whole, you know, verification process, you're making that pretty easy on the user side is that we're, we're making that easier.

I would say, you know, we're three x, um, you know, factor better than the competitor, but that's not good enough. Right. And the reason we are talking to, um, actual is, uh, Charlie's company is because, There happens to be a synergy there where his company is focused on blockchain based credentialing and verification and reducing and removing, actually eliminating the churn that exists today.

So when I explain this to people, they, they don't necessarily, who aren't in healthcare, they don't realize that when a doctor works somewhere and goes through all the pain and effort of having every single aspect of their professional life, uh, verified. When they go work at a different hospital, that whole process happens again from scratch.

Yeah. That is, there is no reuse or leveraging of past verification of information. Every healthcare system says, no, you know, for whatever reason, for liability, for whatever, we're gonna do it all over again. And my, and, and our philosophy is, that's just insane. So I'm, I'm gonna annoy you here, but essentially, okay, so you have a dating site and you have all these

Men signing up, well now you have to have some women signing up as well. And so you have users and now you, you need health systems that are going to hire them. So what's the value proposition to the health system? So the value prop for the health system is number one, what they care about is quality.

This is all the interviews we've done and all of our actual in-market work on sales, right? Actually, you know, we have, we have over 20 major clients on our platform. We have, you know, um, several dozen, you know, uh, you know, significant freelance and then even some perm jobs as well, but mostly freelance. Um, you know, we, we've signed Cleveland Clinic.

We've signed some other big, um, health systems that are out there. And, and so what we, what we, the approach we took to crack this nut is we wanna bring on these big clients, these big name, what we call lighthouse clients, and allow that halo effect to then draw in some of the smaller, more rural hospitals.

A lot of these rural hospitals, um, bill, actually have much more needs. I. On a per volume basis than a, than a big hospital. Right. Because Cleveland Clinic, you know, it's, it's got, it's an area of Cleveland that is saturated with doctors. They don't have a lot of trouble finding doctors, right. They don't have a lot of shortages locally.

Right. Um, you know, if you take a, take a hospital in Mississippi or something, they might have more issues, uh, just demographically. So, um, but what we found is that as we sign more lighthouse accounts, The smaller, uh, hospitals are more likely to gravitate to us because they say, oh, well you're already working with these big guys.

Um, they have probably put you through the ringer with legal compliance and supplier compliance and everything. So we kind of trust that they've kind of been an oracle kind of on your network and that kind of gives 'em a vote of confidence and that's exactly what we've seen. Our sales cycle is getting faster and faster.

Alright, so you, so you start in Cleveland, you go to the clinic. And you sign the clinic and you sign university, and now you're signed with some of the big players in that market. And then from there it gets pretty easy to go out. But how do you expand beyond Cleveland? All right, so now you want to go to, uh, let's say the East coast.

Do you pick a market and start signing up users and systems? So what, what we've done, bill, is that to get those lighthouse accounts we have, so number one, Spencer and Sunil don't live in Cleveland, they live in Florida. Um, and the fact that they live there actually benefits us a lot because Southeast US and the Midwest have a lot of needs for freelance physicians.

So those are our biggest areas. We're actually in about 15, 16 states right now, and we, we are opportunistic at this point where if we have a warm relationship, . Spencer himself has been in this, uh, traditional locums business for over 15 years. So Nils whole professional life has been, you know, building these kinds of connections.

Um, Charlie's one of our advisors, he's made introductions for us, Matthew Miller, um, all of these people. So we are more than anything, using our co-founder and advisor network to build relationships. And then those relationships often lead to more relationships and referrals. That's how we've gone to market with getting those signed up.

Um, so we actually have cut across more than just Ohio. We're in, you know, like I said, 15 states. And then, uh, uh, uh, at the same time, of course, we are signing up doctors, right? So we have about 400 doctors now on our platform. So, you know, it, it's important for us to do that synchronously. But what we have found is that usually the, you know, the.

The, the, the jobs kind of lead the doctor versus the other way around. We want to get some good jobs on there that are viable and then launch marketing campaigns immediately following that and get more doctors and that attracts them and has more sticking power when they see jobs on the platform that are relevant.

And then, like you said, it's a two-sided marketplace, so you've, you've, but you sort of have to know. Let me start at least the, the chicken and egg aspect here. Lemme start with the chicken and , maybe then go to the egg and you know, so does that answer your question? Yeah, it really does. So do you think, um, you know, one of the things is when you looked at all these.

Freelance sites. I, I know that you know this, this whole concept has been around for many years within healthcare, but you've seen sort of this free agent nation sort of rise, um, uh, really across the, the country and across the globe in terms of my ability to, um, you know, you've, you've seen a ton of Uber drivers now that wouldn't norm normally necessarily be cab drivers.

You see a lot of developers doing, uh, freelance work and that stuff. Do you think this is gonna change the nature? Of how physicians go, uh, think about employment and, and go to market. Will this, this easing of this marketplace change it, do you think? I think it's fundamentally gonna transform it. I think that, you know, the thing I talked about with, um, space and time, you know, you know, if you have a bunch of doctors in, in, in Metro Cleveland, but then around Metro Cleveland, you don't have enough.

And, and they're just like a desert of, of medical desert. If you can, you know, find a way to quickly get resources where there's saturation to places where there's not saturation. Part of that is the credentialing time, right? If today's world, it takes four to six months to credential a doctor, wow, that's just unacceptable.

I mean, your whole life could have changed in six months, right? And then you don't even wanna freelance anymore. Um, so we believe that more doctors will wanna do this kind of work if you pay them more, which we do. We pay our doctors more. The reason we're able to do that is 'cause we have a digital model with a low overhead, right?

So we, we actually charge the hospital a little bit less and we pay the doctors more. Because for hospitals, most important is quality. Number two is speed. Number three is cost per hour for the doctor. Number one is typically the cost per the, the rate they're gonna make. And number two is the speed, which with, with which they can make it then.

And that relates to credentialing and matching. And, and so the other thing I didn't mention that's also very important is for the hospital, it's not about the cost per hour, it's the reason they call it the speed being so important. Number two is because if they can, if they have a shortage and they can staff it quickly and fill the gap, they have less revenue leakage.

They can keep the throughput at the same amount or higher. Without burning out the existing staff, which as you probably know, Dr. Burnout is a huge problem. And it's not their fault. It's they're, they're being, you know, pushed to do, you know, charts and emr and they're pushed to do all these things and then they're saying, well, no, you gotta keep the same throughput.

And, and so you, you know, so also you have a lot more people who are looking at the W two model. Being part of a hospital, and that's not necessarily what they wanna do for their work and their life integration. They, they truly wanna be physicians. They've spent, you know, up to 35 years of their life getting to that point.

And, um, and, and they wanna have time with their children. They wanna have family time, they wanna be able to vacation. And, and you have retiring doctors who wanna semi-retire. And 40% of physicians are above the age of 50, 55 years old. Right. So we, we have that issue happening in the country too, with the aging population and workforce.

So how do you, yeah. And then you also have the numbers showing that the shortage is actually increasing, the raw shortage is increasing in the United States. Yep. The, the number of of seats and Medicare funding for residency teachers, et cetera, is not keeping pace with the demand because we have an aging population and, and a c a and other things.

You know, it's, it's, it's interesting 'cause somebody's gonna listen to this and go, man, is is higher medical paying bill to be on this show? And the answer's no because I think it's a great example of digital transformation and it doesn't really require anything from the IT department. Essentially, you're gonna come in, you already have this marketplace established.

They're connect, you're connecting these physicians who are looking, um, looking for this type of work with the health system that's also looking for these people to do this kind of work. and you know, there's, there's really, and, and you're, you're, uh, you're automating and you're digitizing this entire process, which is, you know, it's, it's, it's gonna help them drive down.

The cost is there. So my question becomes, you know, when you add a, a lot of people are trying to reduce their number of vendors, but adding a vendor like you to this process, because it's a sort of a digital agency, I would imagine the overhead's not all that great to have. Add additional vendor in this, in this space for them?

I wouldn't think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, , so number one, our entire agreement bill is an unheard of one page long, our entire agreement with the hospital. Um, and we do that because it's completely transparent. We're not trying to hide anything. There's no, there's not a lot of legal, you know, jargon and stuff going on there.

It's very clear about. What we charge. Um, that 20% markup that I mentioned, it's very clear that our, uh, freelance to permanent conversion is only 10,000. So that's another thing. We have completely undercut the, um, the contingent and permanent staffing companies purposely because what we're basically saying to healthcare systems is try before you buy.

This is another aspect of our business model. You know, in today's world, what happens is when a doctor finishes residency and they're, they wanna be an attending somewhere, they interview at a bunch of places and they get, they get a job offer to be a W two somewhere, and that's it. They haven't auditioned there, they haven't like, got to know the people there like that.

Well over a month maybe, or something like that. And what we're saying is that's very risky. You know, you're, you're bringing on someone and they might have a, you know, great marks and all that stuff, but what if, what if they don't fit in culturally? I. Into that, that place. And so the reason that hospitals don't do it though, is because they don't try before you buy like a few different doctors, a few different shifts a week because they, they don't wanna pay 40 to $50,000 at the end of that to convert them.

And also, most agencies put a lot of stipulations that say, if you're gonna use our freelance person, you have to use them this many shifts and only then you can convert them. We have nothing like that. How do you ensure your quality? So that's one of the things that, uh, an agency would say, uh, as a sort of rebuttal to this is, you know, we, we, we, we vet our people better.

We make sure that we have higher quality people. They're just anyone who wants to sign on, sign up. We'll, they'll let sign up. Yeah. I mean, we actually vet our people probably better than most agencies do. Why? How, how can you say that? So we follow an N C Q A based primary source verification process. It's a 10 point checklist, right?

That N C Q A defines N C Q A is similar to JCO in that way. The JCO standard JCO is more for hospitals. Um, N C Q A kind of came more from the payer community and, um, we're, we're following, uh, a rigorous process of background screening and, and primary source verification, looking at things like sanctions and.

Um, you know, medical malpractice history and things like that. We are not, even after a doctor applies to a job on our platform, the hospital is not notified. The hospital is only notified of a doctor applying after we've vetted them. We take that very seriously. There's already been two doctors that we rejected.

I can name them off the bat. Where we said no, we would, I mean, they were ready to work. Yeah. Let's not actually name them. That would be better. I'll not name them, but, but, uh, you know, I mean, we care about the patient's health. We have doctors as part of our company. Right. We actually also have, um, six doctors who are, are, um, uh, regional vice presidents too, of different areas that we, you know, have a lot of focus on, like, uh, like hospital medicine, em, anesthesia, psych, et cetera.

And so we have a, we have a company that is. You know, uh, it's, it's created by many doctors and many non-doctors too. But we care about the patient's health. Uh, we're not gonna compromise that for revenue. And, um, we have rejected physicians and we'll continue to do that to ensure high quality. Um, another thing that's big and important to us is that in today's world, freelance physicians don't get recognized for being good freelance physicians, right?

It's just kind of, everyone's just kind of treated the same. And so, What we're gonna start doing pretty soon, we're implementing this as we speak, is we're gonna be rolling out a program where we give, um, badges to people for either being like road warriors or getting like high quality scores from a, from a hospital.

Um, you know, whether they have a lot of mobility or experience with E M R systems, so they actually can get recognized for having some unique capabilities. And when a hospital actually signs up with us, they get a . Both sides sign up for free, by the way. So it's free for a hospital to join and free for a doctor to join our platform.

The only time higher medical makes money is after a doctor completes their shifts. We make our 20% markup when a, when a, when a hospital has an account and they look at their dashboard, they can search every doctor in the system. And when a, when a doctor creates a a, an account, they can search every single job in their, an entire system.

That's interesting. Nowhere else can you do like that. And then look at the exact rate you're gonna make and exactly where you're gonna work. It sounds so simple, but Oh no, it is. So I'm gonna take you off hire at this point. How do you think about money as a startup? How should a, you know, a, a young aspiring, uh, health tech entrepreneur think about money and raising money for their startup?

Well, I think first of all, you gotta think of that money as money you put in. I have multiple, some of my best friends in the world have put money into this company. Um, and, and a lot of other people have put in money. Actually we have probably 12 investors that are, are, are physicians and then a few other physicians, investors as well on our cap table.

You gotta think of that money as your money. You gotta spend it wisely. Um, I did not take a salary for 18 months just using myself as an example. I mean, we, everyone on the executive team has sacrificed a lot salary wise. Um, and I only started paying myself about four months ago. Uh, and it's a very, it's a, it's a low salary.

It's enough to get by. Uh, we were talking a lot about Airbnb. Um, I Airbnb my house. I'm actually a Superhost . That's how I, that's how I pay my mortgage. Yeah. So that's how I think about money. I mean, that's, that right there tells you how I think about it. So as you're, as you're out there, have you identified other, you know, so you're creating this digital marketplace, And you're sort of milling around.

Do you see other areas where health systems really could use automation or digitizing a process that you're saying? Man, I, I, I hope a startup gets into that space. Um, I mean, I think there's a lot of room in, in, I. , you know what, what, uh, I mean, just healthcare in general, right? Broadly. Yeah. Talking about just, just broadly.

Yeah. You know, obviously I, I love the whole credentialing space. We've talked about that, you know, on the, both on the, on the hospital side for physicians and on the payer side. It's, it's big there as well. So we haven't even talked about payer enrollment, um, and, and all of the, uh, you know, lean processes and technology that can be applied there.

Um, I think, I think in areas like prescription drugs, I mean, it sounds simple, but. What Amazon did with buying like a, um, a pill, uh, pillbox, or, I forgot the name of the company. Yeah, PillPack. PillPack. Um, I mean, I think they're looking to really change the way people are getting their, uh, their drugs and, you know, when you look at, uh, you know, uh, I have to say cover my meds, like what they did also in this space.

'cause they're a Columbus, Cleveland based company, um, you know, with, with prior authorization. Um, I think there's a lot of, a lot of waste that is being taken out of that whole process. The prescription drug area. I think telehealth, I mean, we have a couple, um, big name telehealth companies that are gonna be coming onto our platform soon.

And, uh, just spoke with one of them today actually. Um, I think telehealth is, is already, you know, had a big impact, but I think it's just only, it's only begun. Um, this ability to, to, again, I think almost that could be kind of like the holy grail of, of freelancing. You know, the ability to, to do it regardless of, of space and, and time constraints and stuff.

A you know, a, a mother at home or a father at home with the kids, uh, says, Hey, I'm, I'm gonna still work as a doctor and after the kids are asleep, I'm gonna do some, some consults. You know? Absolutely. Um, you have things in the mental health space like, uh, you know, better help and things like that, that I've, I've looked at and, and been following like some, you know, some great things in that, in that space.

I think. Things really need to change in the mental health space, I think, in America. Well, you know, one of the things you said, which, which sort of struck me is it, it seems like, Hey, we found this space. It looked really interesting. We went out and developed a solution, but it didn't sound to me like you did a, a full market analysis and said, Hey, here are the 15 competitors.

With the 10 competitors. It seemed like you, you, you, you saw a problem and you went after it. Am I, am I hearing that wrong, or is that, is that pretty accurate? I, I think one, initially when the seed of the idea was there, we started just, just gung-ho kind of going into it for maybe two months. And then after that initial two months, we started to, to get, do more research and understand it wasn't like the top of mind thing that we did, like competitive research, but uh, we were kind of just seeing our instincts and kind of seeing more about the space and talking to people.

and then we, we did understand that. Yeah. There are a couple significant competitors in this space, not hugely ahead of us, by any means. And, and actually their philosophy is quite different than ours. You know, I, I won't name it by name, but like one of the, one of the platforms is much more hospital centric.

They're all about saving money for the hospital, and our philosophy is completely different. We don't think that the hospital is very price sensitive, you know, on a per rate basis for the doctor. The doctor is very price sensitive. If you can pay the doctor more money, you're gonna attract more physicians to apply to a job and therefore you have a chance, a better chance of getting a quality physician, which is what the hospital really, really caress about, because they understand at a, at a higher level in the organization, they know a bad quality doctor is gonna cost you more than anything.

And so, so, you know, we, we understand and, and also the thing is too, that we don't think this is a winner take all market. We think that there will be four or five, six big, um, freelance staffing platforms out there ultimately. So if you, if you'd got into the space and found that somebody had a big lead, you, you still may have continued based on how you viewed the market.

Actually, it's, it's helped us in so many ways to be second, second or third. That's interesting. Saved us a lot of money actually. Well, you know, because you're not, you're not, uh, you're not educating the market completely. The market's already being educated and now it's being educated by more than just one player.

And it makes it easier for us to raise money too, because we can point to what that company raised and said, look, you, you didn't invest in that one, but maybe you can invest in us, you know? . Yeah. So c Cleveland's interesting to me. Do you guys, do you guys only focus on raising money in Cleveland, or do you do No.

You know, do you go to the coast to try to raise money? I mean, I, I did make a couple trips to Silicon Valley. Um, not a whole lot came out of it, to be honest with you. I think Valley investors wanna see in a pre-seed round, um, I mean, they, they have more startups to choose from. The volume of startups to choose from is much higher.

So they are looking for a higher, um, M R R or a r r at an earlier point, much earlier point in time. And also a lot of the things they're investing in are not healthcare it. And so it, it's a little bit different of a world. Uh, we actually, um, you know, are, are on the, on the verge here of just closing a, uh, a, uh, an angel round.

We just call it our pre-seed round. Majority of the money was from angel investors and a couple small institutions. The next round that we do will be an institutional LED round, and, um, you know, that's where we will, we will look to have one, you know, solid lead investor and maybe four or five sidecar um, funds.

Yeah, it's interesting. Would, would you take money from, uh, ? What'd you take money from? Would you, uh, you know, there's, there's a lot of health systems that have investment arms and those kind of things. Is that, is that, is that preferred or is it, is it not? Um, I mean, you know, it would have to depend on the terms of it and, you know, how much they would open up their business to us and what's really a, what's really a partnership, you know?

Uh, but there are certainly advantages of it and. You know, I've spoken to Charlie about some of these types of things too, and, and Matthew Miller as well. And, you know, getting money from A A U P M C or a Cleveland Clinic or, uh, you know, some of these types of, of, uh, institutions, you know, there are definitely advantages to it.

Um, I don't really see a whole lot of downside to be honest with you. Uh, and, uh, it, it can only help to kind of increase your, your market presence. And maybe the only downside is that, you know, an existing . System or something sees it as like, well, you're, you're kind of partnered or aligned with this particular system.

But I don't, I don't think that's much of a thing. Yeah. Most systems are gonna wanna understand the value proposition for them and whether it makes sense. Yeah. No, I think so as well. Uh, Minosh, thanks for, for coming on the show. Any, anything you wanna leave listeners with, uh, leave listeners with? Um, I think it's great that you have a healthcare IT focused podcast.

Um, I think, uh, you know, I'm really grateful for you having me on the show. And if anyone wants to check us out, I mean, we're on all the socials, so LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. So check out Higher Medical there. Uh, we use the hashtag the Higher Life a lot, so you know, T H E H Y R Life. And check out www.higherme.com.

That's H Y R m e d.com. And that's about it. We look forward to hearing, hearing from you. Just outta curiosity, how, how hard was it to come up with the name ? You know what the funny thing is? The name, the very beginning name was H I G H E R. Higher Medical. Higher Medical. And, uh, we, like me and Ferris, we like, we liked it, uh, but we're like, you know, something's missing here.

You know, it doesn't look like we're a tech company and. Then I, I was like thinking about it one day, I'm like, you know, tech companies always misspell, purposely their name. Like Lyft, you know, is spelled like, you know, L F Y T. And I was like, you know, uh, what if we did like H Y R, you know, and then we looked up the U R L and no one had higher med.com, and then that was it.

Yeah, that's, that's usually the, uh, the last step is to, to go out there and look at the, uh, look at the U R L. Can you get it? And, uh, that, that determines whether you're gonna take the name or not. Yeah. No, it's a, it's, it's a great name and, uh, , I love what you guys are doing. I'd love to see you and, uh, and Charlie and the actual stuff really come together.

'cause I think that could be a really powerful, uh, combination with that as a credentialing platform. And, um, And such, such a smart guy, great guy to have, have as your advisor. So thanks again. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for, again, for coming on. I appreciate it. Uh, thank you Bill. Please come back every Friday for more great interviews with influencers.

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