by Tony Chen

I have an idea that I wanted to share with you - please give me your honest opinion (i.e. you can tell me if I'm crazy!). I would love to find others to collaborate with on this. So, if you're interested, contact me directly (tony at hospitalimpact dot org) or comment below. Obviously, the idea is still very rough, but hopefully you'll see where I'm heading. And hopefully, we can refine it together.

What do you think about a new a philanthropic/VC hybrid that invests in preventive health projects that yield at least 338% ROI? (thus the name "The 338 Foundation.")

I'm going on 2 key assumptions:
1. Prevention is one of the biggest opportunities in healthcare. We don't have a healthcare crisis as much as we have a health crisis. We need to pour out a lot more creativity and resources for prevention/healthy living.

2. The biggest obstacle around prevention is a lack of (or misaligned) incentives. No one wants to invest the real money for what's truly best for the patient because these potential investors (whether they be hospitals, insurance companies, pharma, or other companies) make the investment, and others would get the benefit.

For example, a hospital may choose not to hire a chronic disease mid-level practitioner because the "cost savings" it generates essentially goes to the insurance company. Maybe the hospital saves some real costs from reduced ER visits, but not enough to pay for itself. With so many pressures on margin, I can't blame them for that decision. Insurance companies are investing in some disease management 2.0 items, but I doubt they will ever really invest because their members stay with them for only a few years (I've heard 2.5 years?). So any investment they make into keeping the patient healthy is most likely benefiting their competitor (i.e. who ever happens to be their member's insurance company 5 years from now)

It's the classic case of no one wanting to do what's "right" because they pay 100% of the costs while reaping only a fraction of the benefit. So this idea would turn that notion on its head by getting all interested parties to pool their resources together into initiatives that collectively will pay off for all of them.

How I could see this playing out:
- Some smart, collaborative healthcare people could solicit and collect all potential ideas/projects/research and rank them by ROI & approximate benefit to each industry.
- We would welcome individual and corporate donors to the foundation.
- We could do a targeted pilot (i.e. partner with the City of Chicago - i.e. trying to get Chicago to be the "healthiest city in the U.S. by 2015")
- Solicit proposals/applications from organizations who can most effectively implement these projects.
- Fund based on potential ROI and effectiveness of organization's implementation proposal.

So, what's the significance of 338? I'll leave that as a riddle for you. It has to with an important year coming up in our lifetime.

(one side note: One of the ideas I would love to see funded is a savvy viral advertising campaign that changes how people think about their lifestyle habits, like how http://www.thetruth.com/ reduced teenage smoking)

Imagine investing in a fund that yields $3.38 savings/benefit for our country for every $1 we put in.

Please comment/brainstorm with me! Is this crazy or what?