Should Health Systems Fear Non-Traditional Healthcare Brands?

As more non-traditional brands enter the healthcare space and mergers and acquisitions in the industry only continue to grow stronger, health systems are facing more competition from major retail outlets.

But just because there are new, and more, players in the game, doesn’t mean health systems should be worried.

In Las Vegas, Nevada at HLTH2019, Sean Mehra, co-founder and chief strategy officer at HealthTap, discussed how health systems could ultimately benefit from non-traditional healthcare brands moving into the space.

Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Sean Mehra: Healthcare providers should realize that their strengths lie in the quality of excellent care delivery in whatever verticals or specialties they cater to. One of the strengths that these non-traditional healthcare players bring to the table is their ability to aggregate consumer demand at scale — either because they have fantastic marketing machines that convince people to walk into their stores, or amazing online traffic that gets people buying goods from their website.

If healthcare providers understand that their complementary strength is delivering excellent care, and their complementary strength is aggregating consumers and their demand and funneling them to the right suppliers, then there's really a way for these entities to work together.

I can see a beautiful marriage between these mass retailers, whether online or brick and mortar, becoming an excellent funnel of consumers to the best providers locally for certain types of use cases.

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