Newport Beach’s Concierge Key Health, one of Orange County’s closely watched healthcare-related startups, has named its third chief executive in less than a year, while also making a change-up in its target demographic.
The company, which has developed an app that allows its members to request same-day and even same-hour appointments with top doctors in their specialty, said that it has named Jennifer Mons Anderson as its chief executive.
Anderson previously served as chief commercial officer; she joined the company last summer, around the same time former Chief Executive Richard Afable came aboard.
Afable, one of the area’s more prominent healthcare executives, joined Concierge Key shortly after stepping down as chief executive at St. Joseph Hoag Health.
Last week, he told the Business Journal that he joined the company to “further advance the proof of concept for the platform,” and stepped down because he had accomplished that. His prior experience running hospital systems in Southern California also helped Concierge Key gain traction with doctors in the region, he said.
Anderson “undoubtedly has the vision to revolutionize Concierge Key Health’s new health and wellness model,” a product called AccessElite, said Robert Grant, the company’s chairman and first chief executive.
“With her extensive executive tenure in life sciences, healthcare, and technology, I have the utmost confidence she will be able to enhance the way consumers perceive and experience their health and well-being.”
Anderson “is a marketing person—a very different person for the role that I had last year,” added Afable.
Anderson and Grant previously worked for Allergan when it was based in Irvine. Anderson also worked for Irvine-based Alphaeon Corp., which along with Concierge Key are affiliated with Newport Beach-based investment firm Strathspey Crown LLC, which Grant founded.
Millennial Medicine
Concierge medicine is a system whereby patients pay an additional fee in exchange for more personalized care and better access to their primary doctors. The business model began in the mid-1990s.
Founded in 2017, Concierge Key had about 15 employees as of last year. It initially targeted wealthier clients older than 50. While the initial response wasn’t quite what company officials expected, they continued to improve features and devise new ones.
The company is aiming differently these days.
Now, “we’re targeting millennials and women first,” Anderson told the Business Journal.
She believes that millennials have a desire for wellness, but lack accessibility. With a new product platform set to go live in July, AccessElite is “geared for the millennial generation,” she said.
“You simply click a button and decide what you want to do—and you’re able to access a highly vetted acupuncturist and you can see how much it costs” before you decide to make an appointment, she said.
Phase 1 membership for AccessElite will start at $49.99 per month and include access to traditional and Eastern medicine treatments like naturopaths, acupuncture, and massage therapy.
“We make taking care of yourself easy,” Anderson said. “Everything under the wellness umbrella will be discounted for our members, so if you go two or three times a month, the membership pays for itself.”
The company is now geared for users in OC and San Diego; the company’s website lists several dozen affiliated doctors in a variety of specialties that they can choose from.
Anderson plans to expand to six other markets in other undisclosed states by the end of this year—which is when she said the company will be looking for additional investors.
Funding to date for the company hasn’t been disclosed.
Startup Vet
Concierge Key isn’t the only startup that Anderson is involved in.
She’s also co-founder of Aliso Viejo-based Finess, which makes bladder-leakage products for younger women.
She started the company—also known as Soft Health Technologies LLC—in 2013 with Chief Executive Thomas Berryman.
The company was profiled in the Business Journal last June, when it was looking to raise a few million dollars in funding to help with commercialization of the product, which aims to improve upon a product type that’s seen “no innovation since the 1920s,” she said last year.
For both companies, there’s a focus on improving simple quality of life issues.
In terms of Concierge Key, “the biggest barrier to people is on the wellness side—and you ask people ‘why aren’t you taking care of yourself,’ and most of the time the excuses are ‘I don’t know where to go,’ or ‘I don’t know how to find it.’ We are a generation of people who don’t adequately take care of themselves.”
Anderson hopes that by offering access to better health treatments and preventative personalize medicine through its app, millennials will recognize the advantages of a membership.
“If you knew that if you could get in and out in 45 minutes and receive an IV of something like glutathione and then you wouldn’t get sick for the rest of the year—you’d do it right?”
Concierge Key is not health insurance and appointments made through their service aren’t free—although they plan to offer discounts to members for their new AccessElite membership coming in next month.
Members still need to have some type of health insurance to cover appointment costs with a co-pay, or pay out–of-pocket for health services.
Premise
The startup is looking to connect its users with the best of the best.
“If you need to see a cardiologist—you can see the top cardiologist in Orange County tomorrow,” Anderson said. “Who are the doctors that doctors go see—because that’s who you want to see.”
According to its research, the biggest issue wasn’t the amount of time waiting at a doctor’s office or the time a patient received care, 16 minutes. Rather, an appointment with a top-ranked doctor can take months to make. Its website promotes same-day or next-day appointments and no wait times.
