Excerpt – Primedic, a primary care medical service provider dedicated to offering low-cost medical consultations to the urban base of the socio-economic pyramid population backed by impact investing venture capital fund IGNIA. Primedic’s model is simple enough, yet innovative. Pay an individual monthly membership fee of about $10 and receive access to unlimited medical consultations with medical specialists in internal medicine, pediatrics and gynecology. As opposed to general practitioners who usually would have to refer a patient to someone with further training for more complex cases, patients at Primedic immediately get access to doctors with a specialty degree. Given the “membership” nature of their product, Primedic seeks to change customer behaviors and incentivize preventive medical care through a low-cost high-quality program.
In the case of Conchita, she purchased her membership and immediately asked to be seen by a doctor. She was seen that same day by a gynecologist who immediately diagnosed something alarming: an ectopic pregnancy, a complication of pregnancy in which the pregnancy implants outside the uterine cavity. Beyond making the pregnancy impossible, Conchita’s life was in severe danger due to internal bleeding. The doctor’s diagnosis gave her less than 24 hours to live if she remained untreated. Given the urgency of the situation, Primedic made the necessary arrangements to put Conchita on an operating table at a local private hospital less than four hours after the initial diagnosis.
Link to complete article, Forbes, April 25, 2011
