Forward is a startup that aims to offer the best and most efficient primary care services using advanced technology, and it has just opened its first facility.
The San Francisco startup is a health management service aiming to solve the underlying problem of the medical system in the United States - the outdated technology. Membership in Forward's health system costs $149 every month, and it is billed annually.
Going Forward With Primary Care
According to the company's website, Forward offers a wide array of services, from cholesterol checks to vaccines and blood tests. The first prescribed drugs are not taxed. CEO and founder Adrian Aoun says he wanted to change the patients' approach when it comes to going to the doctor and managing their health.
From the touch screen exam monitoring tools to the LCD screens on which the exam results are presented, the facility looks like an Apple Store, according to the first reviews of the facility. The technology Forward uses is designed to make personalized health management easier, faster and more efficient. This is in response to the current state of affairs in the U.S. health care industry.
"The primary function of software in the health care industry today is not to take care of people - it's to make sure everyone gets paid. No one has the incentive to build tools and algorithms to predict your heart attack. Because the sad truth is that your traumatic heart attack is someone else's financial windfall," Aoun laments in a Medium post.
Aoun, a former Googler, also notes that while people tend to go to the doctor's office only once or twice a year, the human body continues to undergo changes, which makes it highly important to attend to one's well-being as often as possible. This is why Forward was conceived as a solution - for $149 a month, members can go and check their health status as often as they want. This will help in preventing health problems and also make it easier for doctors to attend to their patients' needs.
The company will refer patients to outside specialists, as the startup is not built as an all-inclusive kind of clinical facility, but rather as a catalyst in spinning the wheel of progress in the American health care. Also, hospital admissions will have the same treatment - not all patients will be admitted at Forward, but this should not be taken as a lack of ambition of the project.
"Primary care is a very small part of the cost for what health insurance covers. So, even after paying nearly $2,000 a year, you are still going to have to buy health insurance to cover everything else," noted Paul Ginsburg, a health policy expert at the University of Southern California about the policy of the startup.
CDC Primary Care - Also A Priority
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared primary health care a priority in developing new policies. In this respect, a CDC Milestones Project was initiated to formulate effective long-term strategies in improving graduate medical education so that practitioners will be better equipped in addressing the population's needs.
"With CDC funding, the Association of American Medical Colleges and Duke University will continue to identify, enhance, and add to existing graduate medical education population health milestones and program requirements for primary and specialty care residencies and will work across the graduate medical education system toward their implementation," noted the CDC website.
