Here's how Included Health came to be:
Grand Rounds failed at creating a legitimate telemedicine experience in their first attempt. They tried to hack together some off-the-shelf software, which ended up being a miserable provider and patient experience. They shut it down almost immediately.
As an alternative solution, some board members somehow negotiated a deal to "merge" (acquire) Doctor on Demand for $0. The same engineering and product leadership that facilitated the initial failed telemedicine implementation in Grand Rounds took over and drove out the Doctor on Demand leadership. They've clung tightly to the same flawed principles and practices that led to their failed telemedicine experience rollout (move fast and break things, engineers test their own code, dogfood the experience on live patients, etc.). The product team barely, if ever, consults with the actual providers before making sweeping and drastic decisions related to provider tools. Engineering teams are staffed around what's sexy for investors (new product development and data) and not around what's critical (EMR tools, quality assurance, patient safety). It has resulted in a buggy patient experience, provider frustration, high attrition, and a plummeting valuation. Patients, providers, employees, and investors are all feeling the weight of a mismanaged merger during tough market conditions. Just to illustrate how bad it's gotten: the combined company is now worth less than either single company before the merger took place.
I left because the engineering leadership is being driven by staff engineers who want to chase the latest hotness and subscribe to the latest Silicon Valley dogma ASAP without sufficient consideration for provider and patient outcomes. In the context of providing a healthcare experience, the decisions being made were no longer ethical in my eyes.
