Jun 10, 2026 · 24 min · 7 segments
Why would a healthcare startup pay for physician expertise? In this re-release episode of the Startup Physicians podcast, Dr. Alison Curfman breaks down the three ways physicians create measurable…
Alison CurfmanHostNo entities detected.
The question that naturally follows is, why would companies pay for these services? What is the true value? And startups don't hire physicians because they're nice people that happen to know medicine.
They hire physicians because they can solve expensive problems that no one else can solve.
And quite honestly, any startup founder that is working with a limited budget, they're always looking at the return on investment of hiring anyone.
And so today I want to show you exactly how the functions we discussed last week can translate into the language that startups actually care about, which is measurable business impact.
Every dollar that a startup spends on external expertise will fall into one of three value categories.
It will be to help them make more money, to help them save money, or to help them reduce risk.
Your clinical skills naturally drive results in all three areas, often simultaneously.
So I'm gonna take you through real examples of physicians creating a lot of value through revenue growth, cost optimization, and risk mitigation.
Before we explore how physicians create value, let me share this framework that really shapes how I think about my expertise in the startup world.
So every startup, regardless of what they're building, is trying to fight three fundamental battles.
How do we make more money? How do we get more customers or patients? How do we increase adoption rates or close bigger deals or expand into new markets? So this is all about scaling the business and driving sustainable growth.
So how do we do more with less? How do we build smarter products? How do we avoid expensive mistakes and prevent costly rework? How do we streamline operations? And this is about efficiency and preventing things that can affect profitability.
Sometimes this bucket is one that kind of makes us not feel great as physicians because the whole concept of can you do more with less might remind us of some of the pressures we feel from this culture of healthcare these days that feels like it puts a lot on the backs of the frontline workers.
And I wanna emphasize that this cost optimization isn't always, like, trying to ask people to do more and offering them less resources.
[chuckles] It's more along the lines of, like, how can we use technology to optimize different steps in the process? How can we, you know, provide more support in one area that actually can really reduce the amount that you need somewhere else? And so this is a very kind of operational bucket of, of value.
And then the last one is really important in healthcare, [chuckles] which is risk mitigation.
So how do we protect what we've built? How do we avoid having issues with regulatory or compliance issues? How do we prevent patient harm and protect our reputation, um, and stay compliant with evolving standards? I've talked about risk in relation to other industries that, you know, if you were going to launch new marketing product and, like, the worst thing that could happen is, like, you might lose some Instagram followers or, um, you know, waste some money that you don't get a return.
But in healthcare, if you take a risk that was not a good risk to take or maybe you weren't even aware of it and somebody was harmed, I mean, these are people's lives we're talking about.
It's part of why I really take it seriously to be such a, you know, critical driver for patient safety.
Um, and so I think that risk mitigation is a really important bucket for us to understand.
The question that naturally follows is, why would companies pay for these services? What is the true value? And startups don't hire physicians because they're nice people that happen to know medicine.
They hire physicians because they can solve expensive problems that no one else can solve.
And quite honestly, any startup founder that is working with a limited budget, they're always looking at the return on investment of hiring anyone.
And so today I want to show you exactly how the functions we discussed last week can translate into the language that startups actually care about, which is measurable business impact.
Every dollar that a startup spends on external expertise will fall into one of three value categories.
It will be to help them make more money, to help them save money, or to help them reduce risk.
Your clinical skills naturally drive results in all three areas, often simultaneously.
So I'm gonna take you through real examples of physicians creating a lot of value through revenue growth, cost optimization, and risk mitigation.
Before we explore how physicians create value, let me share this framework that really shapes how I think about my expertise in the startup world.
So every startup, regardless of what they're building, is trying to fight three fundamental battles.
How do we make more money? How do we get more customers or patients? How do we increase adoption rates or close bigger deals or expand into new markets? So this is all about scaling the business and driving sustainable growth.
So how do we do more with less? How do we build smarter products? How do we avoid expensive mistakes and prevent costly rework? How do we streamline operations? And this is about efficiency and preventing things that can affect profitability.
Sometimes this bucket is one that kind of makes us not feel great as physicians because the whole concept of can you do more with less might remind us of some of the pressures we feel from this culture of healthcare these days that feels like it puts a lot on the backs of the frontline workers.
And I wanna emphasize that this cost optimization isn't always, like, trying to ask people to do more and offering them less resources.
[chuckles] It's more along the lines of, like, how can we use technology to optimize different steps in the process? How can we, you know, provide more support in one area that actually can really reduce the amount that you need somewhere else? And so this is a very kind of operational bucket of, of value.
And then the last one is really important in healthcare, [chuckles] which is risk mitigation.
So how do we protect what we've built? How do we avoid having issues with regulatory or compliance issues? How do we prevent patient harm and protect our reputation, um, and stay compliant with evolving standards? I've talked about risk in relation to other industries that, you know, if you were going to launch new marketing product and, like, the worst thing that could happen is, like, you might lose some Instagram followers or, um, you know, waste some money that you don't get a return.
But in healthcare, if you take a risk that was not a good risk to take or maybe you weren't even aware of it and somebody was harmed, I mean, these are people's lives we're talking about.
It's part of why I really take it seriously to be such a, you know, critical driver for patient safety.
Um, and so I think that risk mitigation is a really important bucket for us to understand.
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