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The Healthcare Revolution: From Waiting Rooms to Living Rooms

By Lee Bienstock, CEO of DocGo

Disruptors are creating dramatic changes in the way healthcare is delivered in the US – fueling a proactive healthcare revolution. 

This change is long overdue, because the US healthcare system is broken. According to CMS, healthcare spending in America is projected to hit over $5.0 trillion in 2024, accounting for 17.3% of our GDP. Despite the fact that we spend more than any other country, we lag behind in key areas like access to care, health equity, and patient outcomes. We believe the revolution from reactive, traditionally brick-and-mortar healthcare delivery to proactive, value-based care will be the vital shift to effect better health outcomes for Americans.  

A recent Bain & Company report projects that nontraditional providers, including health plans and Advanced Primary Care models focused on outcomes and reduced total costs of care, will deliver 30% of all primary care by 2030. There is also clear alignment between market dynamics and government priorities. The new presidential administration is anticipated to continue implementing policies that will drive healthcare accountability and the adoption of value-based care targeted at improving health outcomes, which will create additional opportunities to advance proactive, patient-centered care.

Quality, consistent primary care is a lynchpin for the broad adoption of value-based care; however, people are no longer willing to accept a system that requires navigating endless red tape or enduring long waits for primary care appointments. The availability of primary care providers is already strained, and a 2024 National Center for Health Workforce Analysis report predicts the gap will widen to a shortage of more than 87,000 full-time PCPs by 2037, which will particularly impact rural communities.

Nontraditional providers have utilized telehealth to partially fill this primary care gap and make healthcare more broadly accessible, but they have found telehealth alone isn’t enough. Because you can’t administer a vaccine through a screen, and you can’t test bone density over Zoom. That’s where leading innovators in the mobile health space like DocGo come to bring hands-on care – as an extension of virtual primary care – directly into patient’s homes.

These nontraditional providers are driving better outcomes and patient satisfaction through partnerships that offer a wide range of virtual and deployable healthcare solutions – including in-home care, mobile clinics, remote patient monitoring, and more. These solutions fill gaps that traditional fee-for-service models driven purely by utilization can’t easily address, and provide more flexible, integrated and effective ways for patients to receive care.

The success of this collaboration hinges on one specific category of nontraditional provider taking the lead – health insurers and managed care organizations. In fact, the Bain & Company report projects a significantly accelerated rate of growth of health plan investment in primary care versus previous projections. Health plans are uniquely positioned to drive this change because they have a confluence of financial incentives, access to deep patient data and influence over payment models. A healthier patient lowers the health insurer’s total costs to care for that patient, so these organizations have a vested interest in improving outcomes. 

Aligning services that not only drive patient health outcomes, but also patient satisfaction has never been more important for health plans. A recent Gallup poll showed the just 28 percent of American would say they have good or excellent health coverage – demonstrating a distinct gap between the valuable service health plans provide and the public’s perception of them. We see a growing need for innovative care delivery models that deliver care to patients in their home, on their terms – services that are optimized for convenience and shatter barriers to access.

The Bain report and other recent market dynamics make it clear that growth in nontraditional providers and the virtual and in-home solutions that support them is no longer a question of if, but when. Patients expect care that not only offers real impact to their health, but also fits into their lives. The system must adapt. This isn’t a shift for the sake of change – it’s a response to what patients need and what the system requires to stay sustainable.

The proactive healthcare revolution will demand innovation, collaboration, and a willingness to rethink old models. Disruptors like DocGo bring the tools, technology, and agility to meet patients where they are. And health plans bring the incentives to make it all work. Working together, we can create a healthcare system that’s not just more convenient but also more effective, efficient, and sustainable.

The future of healthcare is taking shape now, and it’s one that puts patients first.