Fashion Island already has an Apple store, but the glitzy mall in Newport Beach now has Forward, which has been described as the Apple Store of doctors’ offices.
The concierge medical services provider’s first Orange County location and third overall, launched last month. It takes up roughly 1,600 square feet at a spot at the mall that previously held a toy store.
Forward is branded as “a new kind of health membership, augmented with technology.”
The San Francisco-based company’s executive team hails from Silicon Valley giants Google and Uber.
Chief Executive Adrian Aoun, a serial entrepreneur who previously worked for Google and Microsoft, is frank about his background being “more tech than healthcare.”
Prior to Forward, he started Wavii, a Seattle-based app that created a “personalized news feed” for users. Google bought Wavii in 2013 for about $30 million, according to news reports.
Aoun’s tech background was precisely what prompted him to answer the challenge of providing affordable care at scale, he said.
“In healthcare, when you think of scale you think of Kaiser,” he said.
Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente is the largest U.S. nonprofit health plan. It generated revenue of $72.7 billion last year, up more than 12% year-over-year.
Forward has a ways to go to reach that size. The company declined to provide membership counts, but said the OC location has the capacity to serve up to 13,000 members.
The company’s service—the latest in the growing ranks of concierge-focused medical offerings in and around the Newport Beach area—offers members unlimited access to private primary care physicians for $149 a month.
2nd Spot Coming
Aoun said Orange County’s health-conscious demographic fits the bill. It plans to add a second OC location next year.
A patient’s first visit to the office is comprised of a baseline appointment that includes a biometric body scan, blood testing, full physical exam and genetic testing.
That testing is done in about 12 minutes, and it’s designed to provide risk assessment and set health priorities, according to Chief Medical Officer Nathan Favini.
The Harvard Medical School graduate was at Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California prior to joining Forward.
While the testing itself is fast, Favini said doctors typically spend about 90 minutes going over the results of the initial baseline with patients at Forward, much longer than one would spend with a doctor during a traditional annual exam.
At Forward, doctors can take time “to learn about members and discuss things like diet, exercise, sleep and stress … [which] clearly have a big impact on someone’s health,” he said.
The care team employs about 130 doctors on a companywide basis.
Efficient Technology
Aoun said the goal is to use technology to deliver care more efficiently.
He cites skincare as an example of Forward’s approaches differing from a traditional medical office.
Instead of hiring dermatologists, Forward equipped its primary care doctors with smart skin-scanning devices that can help with evaluation.
Forward also uses technology to provide remote care.
Favini told the Business Journal the company is able to keep a member with a chronic condition out of the hospital with an at-home care plan using a combination of monitoring devices, frequent checkups through its app, phone calls and follow-up appointments.
Forward doesn’t generate billing codes, since everything is covered under the monthly membership, including devices and medications.
Some specialty medications that the company doesn’t carry are routed through the member’s insurance.
Aoun said Forward is not designed to replace insurance—for example, it doesn’t cover emergency room visits—but aims to provide a better model for preventative care.
Competing firms include One Medical Group, a San Francisco-based concierge primary care firm that relies heavily on technology.
One Medical, which has four locations in Los Angeles but none in OC, announced last month that financial services giant The Carlyle Group could invest upwards of $350 million in its growing operations.
Forward has raised a reported $100 million since it launched. Investors include actors Ashton Kutcher and Matthew McConaughey, basketball star Kevin Durant, Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) Chief Executive Marc Benioff.
