Starting a business is challenging anytime, but it was especially hard in early 2020!
At the beginning of the pandemic, when the market needed decentralized nursing services, my guest today, Nathan Baar, saw the opportunity to deliver affordable, personal, and transparent healthcare services – with a business model focused on nurses.
Nathan left his corporate job and started Healthbar, believing that the highest level of health is achieved through a combination of traditional and alternative medical approaches.
Timestamps
(01:15): What HealthBar does and who the company serves
(01:34): How HealthBar is unique
(05:22): Finding, attracting and retaining nurses
(06:57): Are nurses employees, contractors, or both?
(07:54): Finding businesses to work with
(09:26): Is HealthBar a replacement for – or an addition to – regular insurance?
(11:18): Are employee families covered, too?
(12:56): What’s more difficult, finding business partners or clinicians?
(16:07): Nathan’s background
(19:05): How the pandemic’s timing affected fledgling business
(21:01): Lessons learned in early days
(23:25): Building a team for growth
(25:27): Adding non-medical team members
(26:50): Does Nathan still do any nursing?
(29:05): Nathan’s “Healthy Business” podcast
(31:01): Who’s a potential customer for HealthBar?
(32:35): Connecting with Nathan Baar
Episode Quotes
“Really, what we’re doing is taking a ‘nursing first’ approach to primary preventative care, which is different from what you’ll traditionally see.”
“Our strategy was informed by a lot of the issues that I saw and directly experienced while I was working in the healthcare system.”
“Administrative waste exists and that’s what everybody’s experiencing with the cost of healthcare. It’s not that clinicians are getting paid that much more.”
“We say come work for a fiercely independent nursing organization that’s going to provide you with a higher level of quality of life and purpose and meaning in your work.”
“One of the things we’re finding is that the healthcare experience is so broken in the United States right now that there are too many things to fix.”
“We’re not going to fix this problem ourselves. This is a problem that’s going to take everybody to fix, but can we be a central moving cog of that wheel and present these solutions? Yes.”
“The ER is an extremely dynamic environment where you’re constantly tasked with solving problems. I really attribute a lot of my knowledge and the way I think about healthcare to that ER experience.”
“You have to have the humility to accept a lot of feedback and learn a lot of things because the moment you think you know it all, you’re going to find yourself in a world of hurt.”
Recommended Listening
- Healthy Business Matters podcast with Nathan Baar and Dr. Andrew White
Connect with Nathan Baar
