HealthSpot seeks to reinvent what happens when you wake up sick

 
Five years ago HealthSpot was just an idea Founder and CEO Steve Cashman had for reinventing health care access for consumers by integrating telehealth and primary care.
Today, the company is poised to leap into national and global growth as it rolls out hundreds of kiosks in Ohio pharmacies and beyond.
Others have tried to get into retail clinics, but HealthSpot hopes to have finally cracked the market.
Cashman says the first retail clinic opened 10 years ago, and CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Target, etc., have spent $4 billion to get into the clinic space. But there are only about 1,200 retail clinic locations today — less than 2 percent of the 60,000 pharmacies in America.
He believes HealthSpot is set up to scale in 2015 after successful pilot programs. After all, he says, less than 50 percent of people have a primary doctor, but everybody knows where they’re headed to get their prescription filled.
“We had units in four states that were seeing patients with seven different health systems, and that was big major players like Kaiser and Mayo,” Cashman says. “We didn’t go after any small targets; we went after the top guys in the country.”
The company also won a contract with Rite-Aid, which has 4,600 stores, to become its telemedicine solution provider. The plan is to put kiosks in Rite-Aid pharmacies in Akron, Cleveland and Dayton in 2015, and saturate those markets.

Reach high

Promotion is critical in order to grow market share for an innovative new product.
“The first thing is that you go out there and you tell people what we’re doing, as nobody knows what it is,” Cashman says. “So, it’s kind of like the first guy that walked up to you with the iPhone.”
In order to educate people, HealthSpot has traveled to countless national trade shows.
In the course of a month, Cashman presented in front of Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Inc., Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE and Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, while appearing on Fox News and “Good Morning America.”
And every one of HealthSpot’s 50 employees is able to articulate the company’s vision and how it contributes to the big picture.
“Every employee can get on the stage and sing the song about why we do what we do here,” he says.
It takes a lot of work to get in front of big business partners, Cashman says. And then, on top of that, you want to get them to invest in the company.
“It’s one thing to walk into Xerox and say, ‘Hey I’m going to spend $20 million moving my data center to you.’ It’s another to get them to invest in your company and help you scale,” he says. “But obviously they see the vision of what we’re creating here and the billions of dollars that we can save health care, and how we can save people’s lives.”
By getting larger businesses like Xerox and Dell OEM to partner with HealthSpot, Cashman says it eliminates some risk, as the company gets ready to scale up.
Now, the promotion is shifting from businesses to consumers.
“A lot of what we’re going to do in 2015 is make sure every person that lives in and around a HealthSpot wakes up and knows that it’s there, and they can come use it,” he says.

Good business in your backyard and beyond

Outside of thinking big, it’s important to take advantage of local resources.
Cashman says Cardinal Health is an investor, and they’ve been able to have meaningful partnerships with Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals.
“So, think local, and do well in your backyard,” he says. “But also realize that there are 100 marketplaces just like Columbus all around the U.S. that you know your product can go to.”
It’s just a matter of streamlining processes to give you the ability to scale that service with quality and make it repeatable, Cashman says.
The market shouldn’t pin in companies. Instead, focus on how local businesses become national successes.
In order to prepare for growth, HealthSpot has invested in bright people who want to be around long term. Cashman says a lot of the executives are shareholders, and they are looking to increase their workforce by 30 to 40 percent in 2015.

“You really are asking a lot of the folks that you have,” he says. “(You want them) to stretch their wings and spread their ability.”