Primary care is one of the biggest areas of investment in healthcare right now. Venture capital and private equity is pouring money into new models of primary care each with their own tweak to how they’re approaching care. In most cases, they also include some sort of virtual effort and some are offering things like unlimited primary care.
While primary care investment is high and we’re likely to see changes to primary care as we know it, I was intrigued by Spora Health which is offering virtual-first primary care to people of color. While this is another example of how innovation in primary care is happening today, Spora Health’s focus on people of color offers something unique that was worth exploring and understanding better.
To dive into what they’re doing, Healthcare IT Today had a chance to sit down with Dan Miller, Founder at Spora Health. We asked Miller to share what their thinking is behind a primary care solution designed specifically for people of color. One element of why they think it’s important is that studies have shown that black patients receive better care when they receive it from a black doctor. I asked Miller to share his and Spora Health’s experience for why this is the case.
One of the interesting findings he shared was around the trust a patient feels for their doctor and how this was impacted by things like ethnicity and race. In case you missed our previous interview with VisualDX, we’ve already shared how a patient’s skin color can impact disease presentation in areas like dermatology. Miller highlighted some of these challenges as well and shared some of the biases he’s found as he’s had Spora doctors go through their diversity and cultural awareness training.
While I love that Spora Health is providing a great option for people of color to get high quality care from culturally competent Spora doctors, Miller and I discussed how this won’t fully scale to the problem. As much as he’d like Spora Health to grow that big, Miller understood that to really solve the problem he had to do more. That’s why Spora Health’s training is available for other healthcare organizations to train their staff to provide more culturally competent care to patients.
If you want to learn more about Spora Health’s approach to providing care to people of color and the difference culturally competent care can have on patients, you’ll enjoy this interview with Dan Miller, Founder of Spora Health.
Learn more about Spora Health: https://www.sporahealth.com/
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