When it comes to brand recognition, Medem Inc., a health information Web site, lags behind better-known WebMD.com or Dr.Koop.com.
But that doesn’t seem to bother Medem or the Internet firm’s financial backers who launched its service, Your Practice Online, at last week’s annual meeting of the American Medical Association.
Unlike most other major health information Internet sites, Medem wants patients to access its content via physicians and their home pages rather than having consumers start with the company’s main page.
Users of AMA-backed Medem first go through their individual doctor’s home page before getting into the Internet site’s vast library of resources from participating medical groups.
“The important relationship is between the patient and the doctor,” said Dr. Edward Fotsch, chief executive of San Francisco-based Medem.
Fotsch, 43, is an emergency room physician by training who came to Medem from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Healtheon Corp., which last year merged with WebMD.
“The physician has the ability to bring forward articles he or she feels is important first,” he said. “I’m not really interested in my patients being dragged through something else to get to me.”
Indeed, an estimated 20,000 doctors from 7,000 practices already seem to agree with Fotsch and have registered with Medem via the AMA and participating societies, the company told AMA members. Some 2,000 physician Web sites have been built with another 1,000 a week launching in the coming months, Fotsch said.
More than 500,000 physicians are able to sign up with Medem for free as members of the AMA or one of six other founding medical societies. Joining the AMA: the American Academy of Pediatrics; American Academy of Ophthalmology; American Psychiatric Association; American Society of Plastic Surgeons; American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; and the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.
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With these well-established societies providing and screening Medem’s editorial content, physicians hope patients will get credible information in a concise package. Physicians often say they are inundated by patients bringing them reams of information from unknown Internet sources.
“It will be an immense timesaver for me at my practice” to be able to provide credible information, said Dr. Nancy Dickey, former AMA president who was recently hired as Medem’s editor-in-chief.
The sites will be free to consumers, but its backers plan to make money by charging hospitals and other health businesses fees to participate and by charging companies that advertise on the site.
Medem also is different from its rivals because the Internet firm is privately held, a factor keeping the company away from the tech wreck plaguing e-health firms on Wall Street these days.
For now, Medem is backed by $6 million from the seven founding medical societies and a $20 million investment from San Francisco-based venture capital firm J.H. Whitney & Co. Other venture firms are also interested in backing Medem, the AMA and Medem executives confirmed.
But Medem isn’t ruling out an initial public offering or a potential merger with another Internet firm as a way of accessing additional capital as needed.
“We are a company in an evolving market,” Fotsch said. “It’s silly to rule out mergers.”
Managed-care reform: If the AMA can get the one Republican vote it needs in the U.S. Senate to pass managed-care reform, the doctors’ group doesn’t think it will be the last.
The AMA now counts just 49 votes, so it would need a Republican defection to get a 50-50 tie, which would then be broken by Vice President Al Gore. The AMA expects Gore will join with the unanimous support of Senate Democrats and four GOP Senators who have split from their party on a doctor-supported bill that would give patients the right to sue their managed-care plans.
Since it’s an election year, AMA leaders don’t think the GOP would allow Gore to cast the deciding vote as the vice president campaigns for the presidency against GOP nominee George W. Bush.
“I don’t believe there will be any way they will let the vice president break the tie,” said AMA past president Dr. Thomas Reardon. “When we get the vote we need, there will be a cascade of several more after that.”
The patients bill of rights currently bogged down in the Senate is almost identical to legislation passed by the House last year.