Not long after the post ‘Waiting on ACOcor‘ did I learn of the company Essence Group Holdings Corporation via a Tweet on Thursday, July 2oth, 2011 by @KHNews:
Leading Venture Capitalists Place A Bet On #ACOs including EGHC
One of the ‘leading VC’s’ referenced in this case happens to include ‘In Search of the Next Big Idea’, Kleiner Perkins via John Doerr, Partner, and EGHC Board Member, whose credits include: Silicon Compilers, @Home, Google, & Amazon to name a few, fellow board member Denis Cortese, MD, Chairman and CEO Emeritus, Mayo Clinic, and Director, Healthcare Delivery Policy Program, Arizona State University, as well as Michael Long, Chairman and CEO of EGHC. Long’s involvment completes the loop back to Michael Lewis’ ‘The New, New Thing‘. Anyone remember Jim Clark’s ambitious, on point but before its time ‘Healtheon‘, re-skined into the B2C play WebMD, and further differentiated into the current iteration of B2B Emdeon?
So what is one to make of this no so ‘stealth’ re-emergence of entrepreneurial engagement in ‘health reform’, ‘accountable care’, or ‘ACO transformational interest’ from a tea leaf interpretation POV?
While many healthcare stakeholders continue to register their dissatisfaction with CMS and more specifically the NPRM on the table relative to ACO formation, many are seeing the handwriting on the wall and positioning to lead the transformational imperative of the change resistant ‘whack-a-mole’ healthcare borg.
My guess is we’re witnessing tangible indicia of round 2.0 in the PPMC (physician practice management company) phenomenon, this time focused on enabling accountable care, whether at the organizational, enterprise or virtual network level.
So if EGHC can be anointed the first ‘PPMC 2.0’ in this race as the defacto ‘ACOcor‘, who will step up and into the ‘ACOPartners‘ slot?
Ladies and gentlemen…’let the games begin.’
acowatch.me 