Former Cleveland Clinic Leader Launches Healthcare Startup Curadux
Austin, TX (PRWEB) September 14, 2015 -- David L. Brown, the former chair of the Cleveland Clinic’s Anesthesiology Institute and a recent survivor of his own life-threatening illness, today announced the launch of Curadux to help patients and families facing advanced illness make wise decisions and avoid overtreatment and undertreatment of their conditions.
“Americans facing advanced illness today are at risk of overtreatment and undertreatment of their conditions because powerful and silent incentives are often driving their healthcare, rather than the patient’s own unique values and goals,” Brown said. “After 38 years of practicing medicine inside the world’s elite healthcare institutions, and as a survivor of my own advanced illness, this is my biggest concern for current and future generations of patients and families. This is why I’m excited to launch Curadux, help solve this problem, and assist individuals in living well during advanced illnesses.”
In 2014, the Institute of Medicine released a landmark report highlighting the unfortunate reality that many Americans aren’t living well in advanced illness. The current health system incentivizes overtreatment, which may cause unwanted, invasive, and expensive treatments, as well as unnecessarily prolonged and painful deaths. In the words of the IOM, “the default decision is to treat a disease or condition, no matter how hopeless or painful.” Undertreatment is an equal concern as policymakers, in their quest to reduce healthcare costs, begin to cap payments to providers, which may incentivize the minimization of healthcare services for people who may legitimately need them.
Curadux solves these problems by establishing a new functional role called a “Care Guide”, staffed by experienced physicians who are solely dedicated to helping patients and families align their unique values and goals with their healthcare decisions, independently from healthcare payers and providers. Care Guides help patients and families to thoroughly assess their values and goals, understand the detailed implications of their options prepared by their medical teams, and ultimately document their healthcare decision, while also alleviating pressure on their primary care physician.
Cody M. Brown, Curadux, http://www.curadux.com, +1 855-528-7238 Ext: 701, [email protected]
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