Tech entrepreneurs often get plenty of credit for developing better, faster and smarter ways of doing things, but they certainly aren’t the only ones driving innovation in our society. Outside-the-box thinking has opened up unexpected avenues – and improved outcomes – within a wide array of industries and sectors, from education to energy, construction to cannabis, financial services to social services. And innovators are cutting red tape and solving seemingly intractable problems inside government as well, whether it’s adopting smarter investigative methods, rethinking economic development or even revolutionizing how we dispose of our trash.
City & State’s annual Above & Beyond: Innovators list puts a spotlight on the groundbreaking work of 50 innovative New Yorkers in the public, private and nonprofit sectors and the positive impact that they’re having across the state.
Providing 24/7 care to anyone who walks through its doors, “the emergency room is the ultimate problem solver,” says Keith Algozzine, and “emergency medicine – the greatest story never told.”
Algozzine is founder and chair of a virtual emergency room and hospital platform that provides 24/7 telehealth treatment, triage and navigation services for patients’ immediate care needs.
The idea for UCM Digital Health came about when Algozzine and his coworkers saw the need for a better ER vetting and expedition process while he worked as an emergency medicine physician’s assistant.
“We saw a trend of people starting to blame patients,” he says, “so we really felt the need to create a better safety net for them.”
Eight years later with over 650 clients servicing 5 million people, UCM’s insurmountable growth happened largely during the pandemic when patients sought its unique approach to a more cost-effective, integrative medical service.
While UCM has been able to keep patients out of the ER and hospital at an over 90% rate, Algozzine says the startup is just one successful solution to a suffering health care system that views medicine from a business-centric model.
“If we could just focus on serving patients, all of the issues facing our health care system could be dramatically improved, but that requires a bottom-up approach instead of our current top-down approach, ” he says. “Our mantra is and always will be the reverse of that. We need to be servants to patients like we all went into health care to be.”
– Erica Scalise