Episode 66: When End-Of-Life Care Isn’t Careful, With Dr. Blaine Warkentine, Founder of Caregoals.com and Vimty

Dr. Blaine Warkentine: Raised in Boulder CO to a preschool teacher and lawyer, with an entrepreneurial mindset. I choose instead to follow a conservative path to medical school. In Orthopaedic residency I disliked just about everything I experienced. Everywhere I looked I found hierarchy, conservatism, and inefficiencies. My daily mantra was to leave as soon as possible. To become my own boss, and make money! This was a dangerous mindset to be in. I was not up to the task, and no amount of future money as a motivator was going to carry me through the 120 hour work weeks. I left in my fourth year to join a technology company.  Within six years I had helped create an orthopaedic vertical that grew to 100M in revenue. But we managed to whittle away most of our profits reeducating surgeons.

And so when the iPhone/app store became available, and it came without a training manual. I knew the platform had the potential to scale. But even more valuable, at some point that scale would come from patients. My passion today is to pursue my best ideas that leverage mobile democratized health. I have spent time working for a dozen companies, gained an exec MBA, and worked in population health. I could not walk away from what I discovered. I felt I had to pursue the extreme burden of unwanted and low value care at end of life.  After three years in that pursuit I feel that I have a meaningful understanding in how to usher in a new approach.

00:00 Blaine discusses end-of-life care.
02:30 How the issue of end-of-life care needs to move from quantity to quality, and how healthcare has been moving towards this as an industry.
04:40 The flawed ideas with end-of-life care, and how hospice care numbers are skewed away from minority populations.
06:45 Why Advanced Directives lack the meaning and use intended.
09:00 Blaine explains what Vimty is and does.
10:50 How patients create their Advanced Directive and make sure that their hospital/care system has it on hand.
11:40 Blaine explains Vimty’s business model starting out as a company in 2012.
13:00 Why Vimty provides a needed “middle brand” for the tough-to-talk-about making of Advanced Directives.
13:35 “Healthcare moves at the speed of trust.”
14:40 How Blaine changed Vimty’s business model to create a more successful service for patients and healthcare providers.
15:50 How you can google to find a reimbursement CPT code for 30-minute end-of-life care conversations.
16:30 How Vimty led Blaine to create Caregoals.com.
17:50 How a patient might find Caregoals.com.
20:00 Aligning with healthcare systems as distribution partners to create a powerful solution for healthcare needs.
22:15 How Vimty and Caregoals.com are making Advanced Directives and end-of-life care conversations more meaningful and actionable.
23:30 Blaine explains the goal behind collecting general data on end-of-life care patient preferences.
25:00 The Scandinavian end-of-life care model that reimburses family members or loved ones for being caregivers.
30:00 Why end-of-life care conversations are so challenging, but also meaningful and more simple than lifestyle-changing healthcare.