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Technology Stocks : Healtheon - The next Netscape (Fortune Sept. 9 1998)
HLTH 0.1200.0%Sep 10 5:00 PM EST
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To: MDD who wrote (16)1/20/1999 6:37:00 PM
From: Nicholas Thompson  Read Replies (1) of 48
 
I think Healtheon will only be successful if they are able to come close to being everything to everyone in moving paperwork (and reduction thereof) in the health care industry. If a patient could visit a secure web site and see their entire lifetime of health care records and have ready access to information about insurance, doctors and hospitals, medication and the like that would be of incredible value. If a regional HMO had to rebate a customer for emergency care in a far away hospital and all they had to do was visit a web site for five minutes that would save a lot of trees and cash as well as hassles for everyone.

The point is that no one player involved in the health care industry right now has an interest in doing this on a grand scale because they are too busy making profits from the inefficiencies in their little niche. Therein lies the rub for Healtheon - entrenched interests with no incentive to change. Perhaps Healtheon will be able to ramp up their operations by streamlining the paperwork operations of a few big players. If they can achieve critical mass that way then perhaps they will be successful. It's quite possible that one of the players you mention will see the large picture in time to corner the market for themselves.

However, I think that is unlikely because of the short term pain they would experience trying to do what Healtheon has to do to become viable. Companies like GE which can adapt to changing marketplace conditions are extremely rare (it is the only original Dow stock I think). I don't expect any established players in the largest and most inefficient government handout program in existence (otherwise known as our health care system) to beat Heatheon or some other new company to the punch. I just hope someone gets it right so that our health care system becomes more transparent and (hopefully) rational.
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