Minalkumar Patel

It had to be said! 🎯 Epic's stranglehold on healthcare IT has stifled innovation for too long and the writing is on the wall. The consolidation myth needs to die already. We were promised efficiency and lower costs, but what we got was bloated bureaucracies that prioritize profits over patients. The data doesn't lie: smaller, agile providers consistently outperform these healthcare monopolies on both outcomes and patient satisfaction. Time for a major reset in how we think about healthcare delivery.

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FORCING CHANGE IN SITE OF CARE McKinsey & Company's recent paper on the forces pressuring healthcare, including the possibility of margin compression of up to 13 percentage points for health systems, does a good job of putting numbers around what most operators already feel. Two of the biggest drivers they mention are policy shifts in reimbursement and rising utilization driven by an aging population. The cohort of 70+ year old Americans will grow the fastest over the next 5 years, and it is well established that older patients have more complex needs, more chronic disease, and more touchpoints within the healthcare system. Layer that on top of continued clinical workforce shortages, and the supply-demand gap widens further. From my perspective, optimizing for site of care is the most important lever we have to address this challenge. We can’t quickly reduce how much care older patients need, but we can change where and how services are delivered. Supporting aging patients in lower-cost settings like the home, ambulatory sites, and virtual environments is no longer just a preference or convenience, it’s a necessity. This is where the conversation around site-neutral payments becomes so relevant. CMS is moving quickly in this direction, and hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) are squarely in the crosshairs. The shift will undoubtedly clamp down further on hospital margins, but it shouldn’t be surprising. We’ve been talking about the demise of HOPD reimbursement for years, and the health systems that will fare best are the ones who are working towards aligning their approach with where patients can be treated safely, efficiently, and at lower cost, rather than relying on legacy reimbursement structures to fill the gap. And just like it doesn’t make sense to try to replicate a hospital or nursing home environment in a patient’s home, we also shouldn’t try to carry the same clinical staffing model into every care setting. Yes, there are non-negotiables when it comes to patient safety and clinical expertise, but there’s also a meaningful opportunity to rethink how teams are built. That means clinicians at every level working at the top of their licenses, thoughtfully involving family members and community resources, and using technology to surround these sites of care with non-clinical operational support. From my health system days, I understand why rising costs, margin pressure, and site-neutral payments feel like threats. While painful, I’m hopeful they can also serve as a positive forcing function, pushing us toward care models that are better aligned with our aging population and the realities of today’s workforce.

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Healthcare capital does not operate in isolation. It moves in alignment with policy, regulation, and execution discipline. At eCap Summit 2026, conversations with FHA leadership reinforced an important reality for healthcare operators: Structured capital strategy must anticipate regulatory direction — not react to it. In today’s environment, HUD-insured executions, bridge-to-HUD strategies, and long-term healthcare real estate planning require more than access to capital. They require alignment. At Capital Stack Advisors, we remain actively engaged in the policy conversations shaping skilled nursing, assisted living, behavioral health, and memory care capital markets. Because when strategy aligns with policy, execution becomes seamless. Where Capital Strategy Meets Execution. Connect With Us. #HealthcareCapital #HUD232 #HealthcareRealEstate

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Is your digital health strategy strengthening rural systems—or quietly draining them? The Executive Quick Start Guide outlines how to build rural first regional digital health networks that: ✅ Expand specialty access without exporting patients ✅ Use telehealth, eConsults, and RPM with clear escalation rules ✅ Align multiple organizations around shared outcomes Designed for leaders responsible for regional alignment, not one-off pilots. 📘 Explore the guide https://lnkd.in/gNTPnxMn #RegionalHealth #HealthcareStrategy #RuralHospitals #Telehealth #PopulationHealth #DigitalHealth #RuralHealth #HealthcareLeadership #eConsults #RemotePatientMonitoring #SpecialtyCareAccess

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One of the most wicked cross-disciplinary challenges of our time is how we innovate to impact human health, and it isn’t just about “healthcare.” It’s an intricate set of ecosystems you're probably already active in, like digital and physical tech, transportation and cybersecurity. As a new Board member for the Stanford Emergence Health Industry Collaborative, I’ll be engaging with all of you -- #product leaders, corporate #leadership, entrepreneurs and institutional backers -- to catalyze our collective approach. Together we can instigate what Schumpeter originally defined as #innovation: “the carrying out of new combinations” as we recombine resources for beneficial “creative destruction.” Human health is a thrilling problem to solve because it impacts an intertwined and diverse range of cross-industry ecosystems, even areas like: 💡 drone delivery 💡 fraud detection 💡 temperature monitoring Brilliant problem-solvers need outside-the-office oxygen to innovate, and Stanford Emergence plays that role: curating fresh experiences, network intersections, and knowledge immersions. This “innovation engine” catalyzes the unique "recombinations" we all need. Ultimately, these "remixes" generate high-impact roadmaps, new market opportunities and clever partnerships. More on that on June 5th in Palo Alto. I invite you to ignite your company’s product strategists and whittle away at systemic issues that dilute every company’s market success – and our health. Learn more below or reach out to me directly for discussion. Congratulations to my distinguished fellow Board members (noted below) in contributing their talent and networks to take on wicked problems collaboratively. Best Buy Microsoft Kaiser Permanente Health Management Associates Trace3 My sincere gratitude to those who continue to keep their minds open to an entrepreneurial spirit, including powerhouse Emergence founder Narges Baniasadi and Health Industry Collaborative co-founder Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, MD, PhD, FACEP, FAMIA, FAIM at Inflect. Thank you Sherri Douville for your lifelong dedication to pushing us all to systemic-scale leadership, and to Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business for investing in growing women leaders. My publisher Taylor & Francis Group continues to invest in helping us ready the next generation of innovators (learning will never go out of style) – thank you all. Many more (shorter) posts to follow to engage this network’s support on a high-impact mission of our time.

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Rock Health H1 2025 Market Overview: Signals of Maturity The latest market scan from Rock Health is more than a funding recap—it’s a validation of digital health’s evolution from experimentation to execution. H1 2025 Market Overview: Proof in the Pudding Capital is consolidating around performance. With $6.4B deployed across fewer deals, investors are making bigger bets on platforms that show real-world traction. AI-enabled startups raised 62% of all funding, commanding an 83% premium over non-AI peers. This isn’t just hype—it’s a shift in how value is being priced.  Provider workflow is the new infrastructure. Clinical and non-clinical workflow solutions drew 55% of total funding. That’s a clear signal: the market is rewarding tools that drive measurable ROI and integrate seamlessly into care delivery. Exits are back—and they’re meaningful. Hinge Health and Omada Health’s IPOs show that tech-enabled care delivery can scale sustainably. Their decade-long journey to evidence-based, AI-augmented models is a blueprint for what’s possible when product, outcomes, and trust align. Ambient documentation and medical reference tools are scaling faster than any tech in healthcare history. Abridge and OpenEvidence are proving that provider trust, intuitive UX, and capital efficiency can unlock breakout growth. These aren’t pilots—they’re platforms. This report reinforces: → Scalable impact requires trust, usability, and validated outcomes. https://lnkd.in/gVhtgK5e Would love to hear how others are interpreting this moment. What’s your capital allocation thesis in H2? #DigitalHealth #HealthTechInvesting #AIinHealthcare #CareNavigation #ReferWell #HealthTechStrategy #VentureCapital #HealthcareInnovation

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Channel partnerships increasingly drive a larger component of value creation for innovators in technology and are an important part of strategy for Caduceus Capital Partners, LLC portfolio companies. Our most recent perspectives are outlined for participants in this exciting market.

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I was invited last week to share my perspectives at the CMS and ASTP/ONC Health Technology Ecosystem RFI listening session, on the panel titled “Unleashing the Digital Health Ecosystem.” After a few days of reflection, I have three key takeaways: ➡️ Investing more in #primarycare will accelerate #interoperability. The foundational problem of the current tech ecosystem is not technological – it’s incentive misalignment. Technology, no matter how sophisticated, won't yield meaningful information exchange unless there’s true market demand for interoperability. The most powerful lever CMS controls is payment, so if we want a thriving health data ecosystem, CMS must pay primary care more for what truly matters: keeping people healthy, managing complexity, connecting the dots across the system. ➡️ Outcomes, not checklists, matter most. CMS should reframe certification to prioritize end-to-end utility for clinicians and shift certification from technical minutiae with requirements that would be market-corrected, to clear, outcome-based mandates that focus on real-world, functional data interoperability. ➡️ AI can change the role of data standards. The debate between FHIR and proprietary APIs is quickly losing relevance. While FHIR remains the "minimum viable" standard and proprietary APIs support more complex use cases, AI is reshaping this conversation fast. Soon, AI will serve as a near-costless translator across standards, creating structured, actionable data out of blobs of text. True interoperability will then focus less on rigid adherence to a single standard and more on simply ensuring the frictionless exchange of rich data, with AI handling the interpretation and structuring. Thank you to Amy Gleason, Arda Kara, Kristen Valdes, Brendan Keeler, and Therasa Bell for this conversation in DC. It is exciting to see the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services discussing positive progress on important issues, including data standards, incentives, and interoperability.

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The challenge of custodians is what we all have to work on to protect individuals and data collectors. Where does the data go?

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