Need a hernia surgery? That'll be $2500, $5000, or $20,000.

The other night I met a really awesome general surgeon here in NYC at my regular haunt, Hotel Delmano, to discuss Hello Health and what it means to surgeons. His name is Dr. Evan Goldstein and his practice is Tribeca Surgical. Should you need a surgeon, you’d be hard pressed to find one better than Evan. He’ll give you his email and mobile number and communicate like a normal human being. On top of that, he’s got passion and a desire to do his part to fix this healthcare insanity from the ground up.

I asked him what his most common surgery is he performs. Answer: Hernia repair. I then asked him how much it would cost him to perform the surgery. Evan operates at two places here in NYC. One is the typical major academic institution. The other is a lovely, small, highly focused surgical center that can operate at a fraction of the cost of the major institution. The turnaround time between cases at this “focused factory” is about 10 minutes. Turnaround time at the bloated mess facility is about an hour and a half. When he operates on someone at the large institution, the hospital bills a person’s insurance company about $5,000 for the procedure. If you don’t have insurance, you’ll get a bill for about $20,000 for the procedure.

Contrast this $20,000 with the bill you’ll receive from him when he does the surgery at the small center: $2,500 for an uninsured person. How can this be? It’s called personalized service minus the bloat from a physician who gives a damn about you. Large hospitals are like antiquated factories that were built to produce anything. They’re like a car parts factory that was built 50 years ago to produce 50 different parts– grossly inefficient with assembly lines that snake all over the place. Compare this to a car parts factory built a few months ago designed exclusively to efficiently produce 3 parts with highly consistent quality.

That’s the network we’re building with Hello Health. The doctors who care, the doctors who want to do the right thing, the doctors who know there’s gotta be a better way, the doctors who truly love being doctors and want to help their patients be well, the doctors who don’t want the hassle and the bloat…they’re coming out of the woodwork to find us, to meet us for beers, and to say I want to join you.

This is the future healthcare system. A bottom up network of doctors and patients who care about relationships, simplicity, affordability, and a better experience.