The following interview is a conversation we had with Viral Patel, CEO of Radish Health, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Viral Patel, CEO of Radish Health: $5 Million Raised to Connect Employees with a Better Healthcare Experience

Viral Patel
Thanks for having me. 

Brett
Am I pronouncing your first name right? Almost. 

Viral Patel
It’s viral.

Brett
Vera Got it. All right, sounds perfect. Now, before we begin talking about what your building, let’s begin with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background. 

Viral Patel
Yeah, so my background, I actually am an Er physician. I worked at various hospitals here in the New York area where I live up to my last big job. I was the vice chair and director of one of NYU’s emergency rooms, after which I saw a lot of interesting things happening in health tech, especially around care delivery. Had no tech experience, but seemed interesting enough, actually quit my job at the hospital and then worked at Oscar, the health insurance company, for a handful of years as a medical director as well prior to starting Radish. 

Brett
And what did your family what did your friends think? What did your colleagues think? Did they think you were insane to leave behind a career as a doctor? 

Viral Patel
Yeah, I was still practicing as a physician and a medical director at Oscar, so I hadn’t fully left my career as a doctor, but they still thought I was insane, leaving a really cush medical director, vice chair job of a hospital system. So, yeah, still thought I was crazy. It’s different. 

Brett
Got it. And a couple of questions we like to ask just to better understand what makes you tick as an entrepreneur. Is there a CEO and an organization that you’re studying the most and learning the most from right now? 

Viral Patel
I’ve always been. I think that the same thing that I’ve done when I was a practicing physician as well. I try to study as many CEOs possible. I don’t think that anyone has it perfectly in right, and no one is going to have the exact same issues or challenges that we would have. So it’s always important, I think, to take a look at a bunch of different ones and see what they do right and also see what they do wrong. 

Brett
And are there any specific ones that you’ve really learned the most from as you’ve built this company up?

Viral Patel
One specific book comes to mind. So prior to and right around starting the company, I read Danny Myers book, Setting the Table, and I come from a hospitality background as well. Parents run hotels and that was really interesting. That how he talked about the importance of that personal relationship and both how you treat your employees as well as how you treat your patrons. And I think that a lot of his success is based on that. And I think that we try to hire that way at Radish, as well as how we try to take care of our patients as well as they should be the most important person when they’re talking to you. I think that it’s really interesting book. I don’t know if you’ve read it or not. 

Brett
Yeah, I haven’t. And it’s refreshing to hear a new book. Most people that come on say something like zero to one or the hard thing about hard things. So refreshing to hear a new book. Now let’s talk about Radish health a bit more in the origin story and then we can talk about what pain point you’re really solving. 

Viral Patel
Yes, I mean, I said a little bit about my background and so that’s part of it. And then just being a doctor. I was a doctor for a lot of friends and family. And what I saw and heard a lot was, these are people a lot of my friends and family have really smart people, high level degrees, really good health insurance in most cases, like Cadillac Health plans. But when they got sick, they really didn’t know what to do and how to navigate the health care system. And part of that was even people that had a doctor, they called their primary care doctor that they got their annual physical from. They couldn’t get a hold of that doctor. They just call me. There should be a better way. And I think that everyone deserves that doctor in the family kind of experience, where it’s not just you reach out to them once a year when you get your annual physical, but then that’s also the same person you go to when you get a cold or when you twist your ankle and you think that you may need an X ray.

Viral Patel
Like you figure out what to do, or hey, I have this weird ailment. I don’t know what to do. Do I need to see a doctor? Do I need to see a specialist? All of those things should be taken care of by one person, in my opinion. And I think that it was those experiences, both working in the Er and seeing the end result when things went wrong on that. Working at Oscar, the health insurance company, trying to prevent people from going to the wrong types of care and spending a lot of money for themselves on the health plan, and then just being that doctor for friends and family, there’s a better way. And I think that way is to essentially have everyone feel like they have a doctor in the family. 

Brett
And is that concierge medicine that’s the term that I’ve been hearing a lot lately. Is that the same thing or is that different? 

Viral Patel
It depends on who you talk to and how you define it. Concierge medicine. Here in New York City, there are a lot of concierge medicine practices. They don’t work with health insurance. They don’t take health insurance. They’ll charge you sometimes $5,000 a year to your family to have access to a doctor whose cell phone number you have. And most people just can’t afford that. So I think that what we wanted to do is use technology to make that level of service available to people that have employer sponsored health plans. Got it.

Brett
And I was reading an article about you that said you’re eliminating unnecessary Er visits. What percentage of Er visits would you say are unnecessary? 

Viral Patel
Before I say that, I think it’s important to remember that it depends on who’s asking and who’s answering the question. I think that from a physician, I can easily say, look, 70, 80% of visits are unnecessary, and they could have been taken care of by another doctor. But from a patient perspective, I think that number probably isn’t even close to that high. It may be 1020 percent, because for them, they came to the Er, not because they just wanted to come to the Er. They came to the Art because they thought they had a true emergency. So I think it’s always important to have that distinction on, yeah, maybe that 70% could be prevented, but that’s that when you ask a doctor after the fact versus the patient after thought they had an emergency. And I think it’s important to remember. Got it. 

Brett
Makes sense. And then can you talk us through who’s actually paying you and how you make money and what that business model looks like?

Viral Patel
Yeah, so we work directly with employers. So employers will buy traditional health insurance that covers major medical issues. If you want to go to Dr. Jones down the street, you can. If you need to walk into an emergency room, you can. It’ll be covered. But they’ll buy our service on top of that to give their employees a more premium product. So instead of checking your Aetna card, looking on the back of it, finding a doctor that’s in network, calling a few, going down the list, to find someone that’s in network that’s taking new patients and then getting your annual physical, and then not being able to reach the same person. When you have a cold, you have strep throat, you need to quick refill for something, and having to go to urgent care for that, we become that one person. So you are given access to our services through an app.

Viral Patel
You’re assigned a doctor, you’re assigned a therapist. You know that doctor and therapist are in network. You know, they take your insurance. You know, there’s not going to be any surprise costs or out of pocket cost and everything just kind of works. There’s no heavy lift on navigating how to use the health insurance employers providing you. 

Brett
And in terms of adoption, where are you seeing the most adoption right now? What size organization and are there any specific verticals or anything else there that you can share just in terms of traction? 

Viral Patel
So we’re pretty agnostic when it comes to vertical. Everyone needs better healthcare. I think in terms of company size, we really go after companies that are two, three to 100 and above. The reason being those companies tend to be more likely to be self insured. And they see not only an upside in providing a better service to their employees, but if those employees are then now using the Er less and urgent care less and overall healthier, not only are they more productive and happier, but they also cost less to their health plan. Got it. 

Brett
And what about numbers? Are there any numbers that you can share?

Viral Patel
Yeah, we are approaching around 10,000 lives that we take care of. We’re over a dozen companies we work with here in the New York area. We can provide care in a little over 20 states currently. Should be at 50 states by the end of Q One.

Brett
And is this just a regulatory nightmare for you? Do you spend a huge amount of time and energy and money on the regulatory side or what’s that like? 

Viral Patel
For the last part, I think that the state licensure and growing into new markets. That’s a regulatory nightmare. Having different corporations based on the state and state laws, it’s a bit of a challenge and a nightmare. But given that more and more companies are either hybrid or have multiple locations, we’ve seen that it’s just important for us to be able to provide care in more and more states. We cover most of the heavily populated states, but as companies have fully remote workforces, you’re seeing more and more workers in places where you traditionally wouldn’t got it. 

Brett
A few months ago, we had the Teladoc founder on and he was talking about in the early days how the medical industry was very hostile to Teledoc and what they were trying to do. Have you experienced any hostility to the model that you’re trying to bring and what you’re trying to push or how is the industry perceiving what you’re doing?

Viral Patel
I think that we haven’t really seen hostility overall. We do occasionally talk to people that don’t quite understand how you can provide everything virtually and how you can become someone’s doctor virtually. And I think the question I always ask to those people and they tend to be insurance brokers or consultants we talk to is like, well, do you have a doctor? And like, yes, I do. And how often do you see them? Well, I see them once a year for my annual physical. And the next question was like, well, if you got sick tomorrow, where do you go every time. They always say, oh, I go to urgent care, it’s faster. So my point being is people that even have a doctor, they’re going to the wrong place when they get sick. So if they can go to the same person for both things, is that not better care?

Viral Patel
So that’s really I think the biggest pushback we sometimes get is that people want to believe that everything has to be done in person to have a primary care doctor.

Brett
Makes sense. And I feel like COVID had to accelerate that change quite a bit, right? 

Viral Patel
A little bit. I think the biggest thing it did was more physician practices started accepting that telehealth is a way to provide great care, practices that historically only saw people in person and in their office started doing telehealth care. Whether it’s GI doctors doing follow ups for colonoscopy via telehealth instead of having them come back in, or same with cardiologists that you come in for the test, you can always do the follow up. And I think that it became more accepted amongst the medical community. I think that was the bigger thing that I saw, and maybe that’s my bias as a physician and less so from the patient side. I think patients have always valued convenience and care as well as that doctor patient relationship. And telemedicine obviously provided convenience. It’s just more people were providing that convenience based. COVID makes a lot of sense. 

Brett
And what about market categories? How do you think about market categories? Is this a new category you’re creating? Is this employee health benefits? What are your thoughts there? 

Viral Patel
I would say we’re a new category, so I don’t want to be pigeonholed into just the traditional telehealth companies like a Teladoc or an Amwell. They’re a different model. I think they’re more akin to like the Uber model, where I need a car, I match someone with a car and a driver, and I match them with a car and a driver, and he puts it through together. They drive me somewhere and that’s it. I don’t get the same driver again. In our case, you always get the same person, and we assign you a doctor so you can build a relationship with them. So whether you book an appointment with them for annual physical and talk to them for 30 to 45 minutes, or you text them in the morning because you have a weird rash and you don’t know what to do, it’s the same person you built that relationship with. 

Viral Patel
I think that’s important not only from a patient experience because you’ve built trust with that person, but it’s also important from an efficiency standpoint, given that your physician isn’t asking you a bunch of questions they already know the answers to. Similar to when my friends and family call, I don’t ask their meds, their allergies, and their prior history because I already know. I think that’s important in terms of experience as well as the efficiency of how you provide care makes a lot of sense. 

Brett
And as I’m sure you’ve seen, healthcare funding is booming or health tech is booming right now. What are you doing to really rise above the noise and stand out and capture the tension of all these customers that you’re working with? 

Viral Patel
I think it’s just providing a great experience. I think that if you provide great care, provide you a great experience, more people are going to want to use your service. We have really happy clients that are willing to be our references when we’re looking at new clients. And as long as we continue to do that, I think we’re continuing to grow our user base and client base. 

Brett
And as you’ve brought the idea to market, what would you say has been your greatest challenge so far? 

Viral Patel
I think that as an entrepreneur, that physician has a background and not a business background. I had an idea of what I thought was the right way or what I thought was an optimal way to provide care, but didn’t put as much, I guess didn’t have the understanding or importance of how you brand or how you present something before. And for a long time, we kind of got pigeonholed into, oh, you’re just like a teledoc, or you’re similar to an EAP program, or you’re similar to this, as opposed to, like, look, this is a different way of providing care. It’s similar to some of these things, but not quite. And slowly educating folks and learning how to do that, I think, was the biggest challenge for us. 

Brett
And during your time at Oscar Health, were there any lessons that you really walked away with? They’re one of the bigger, I think, most disruptive health startups that I at least know of. So were there any valuable lessons or things that you walked away with from there? 

Viral Patel
Yeah, I think that one of the biggest things in this. I saw this not just at Oscar, but even in my time in the Er. I think that people really value convenience, and if you want to change behavior, the behavior you want people to change into has to be a convenient thing. So we talk to folks all the time. We’re doing a lot of patient education around, getting them to not use urgent care and go to their primary care doctor instead. But then if you ask the patients why they don’t do that, and they’re like, well, it’s not convenient. I called the doctor’s office and they’re not available until next week, but the urgent care is available in ten minutes. So I think you need to provide a great service, and that great service needs to be convenient and accessible as well. 

Brett
Makes a lot of sense. Last question here for you. If we zoom out into the future, what’s the three year vision for Radish? 

Viral Patel
We want to be in all 50 states and providing care to a lot more patients than we currently are. So continue to grow, continue to provide care in the way we are. And we hope it helps not only show that our method of providing care is a better way, but I hope that others that are in the industry start to do that as well as where you provide a doctor. Patient relationship that’s sustainable and with the same person. Make sure that doctor works with a therapist and they talk to each other as well. And you actually truly coordinate your care and you have someone that feels like that doctor in the family. I love it. 

Brett
Very cool. Well, that’s all we’re going to have time to cover for today before we wrap. If people want to follow along with your journey, where’s the best place for them to go? 

Viral Patel
So they can go to radish health, spelled like vegetable health? And we have press pages on there, blog posts, as well as some case studies as well, and basic information on what we do and how we do it. 

Brett
Amazing. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat and wish you the best of luck in kidding on this vision. 

Viral Patel
All right, thank you so much for having me. Have a great day. 

Brett
Keep in touch. Bye.