Why Own One When You Can Own Twenty? Sharing Economy Provides Solutions

Well, we’ve talked quite a few times about the sharing economy and the movement that is going forward in every market across the globe.  This article does a good job of reviewing not only the basics of the new model but has some great insight from a thought leader out of NYU’s Stern School of Business.  “But beneath all the hype is a sensible idea: there are a lot of slack resources in the economy.  Assets sit idle – the average car is driven just an hour a day – and workers have time and skills that go unused.  If you can connect the people who have the assets to people who are willing to pay to rent them, you reduce waste and end up with a more efficient system.”  In the end, every health system has idle assets and redundant needs on those assets, sharing reduces waste and creates more efficiency in consumption, not only of that asset but also of that capital spend.

“In the past, this was hard to pull off, because the transaction costs involved in borrowing and lending were high: there was no easy way to find someone who had what you were looking for and no easy way to know if someone was trustworthy.  But digital technology has made it much easier for buyers and seller to find each other quickly, and to evaluate the people they’re trading with.”  This is true in today’s health system as well, even though the system is under one corporate entity.  The facilities may have been owned and operated by another corporate entity in the recent past, meaning that different systems are in place still from that old regime and data is not in a common format.  Also, these facilities, now part of the same organization, may have been competitors for decades prior to this new relationship.  Cohealo provides a common data set that all facilities can see, we provide a reliable and trustworthy field of play so that when you lend you know you will get back the asset that you own and we reduce the costs associated with the entire process.

“We now have hundreds of millions of consumers who are carrying in their pockets powerful computers that are always connected to high speed networks,” Arun Sundararajan, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and an expert on the sharing economy, told me.  “That makes it possible for people to rethink the way they consume.”  The evolution of the hand held mobile device will truly revolutionize healthcare, and not because of their use in the clinical setting, the real efficiencies will be gained in the supply chain.

“There’s a mindset that consumers are doing this just to save money,” Sundararajan said.  “But I think that what’s really compelling about the sharing economy is the variety and expansion of choices that it offers.  Instead of being tied to owning one car, I can drive twenty different ones.  So I expect this will expand consumption, rather than shrink it.”  I agree and this is something we talk about with all of our prospects and clients.  Cohealo does not just help share to reduce spend, we help health systems spend more – just in a more efficient manner.  Consumption will be greater in 5 years, it has to as the greatest generation ages and utilizes more care.  This is why the tracking of your capital dollars as a health system is so important, more care will be provided but at fewer reimbursement dollars due to cuts, how you control your spend is how you will reach financial stability.