Welcoming Our Newest Healthcare Advisor: Prakash Patel

As we invest in the next frontier of healthcare, we continue to seek advisors who bring hard-won, frontline experience navigating the most complex corners of the care industry. That’s why we’re thrilled to welcome Prakash Patel, MD as our newest healthcare advisor.

Prakash’s career is expansive and phenomenal. (We are still trying to figure out when he sleeps.) He trained in orthopedic surgery before pivoting to the world of startups and venture, where he helped spin out and be part of launching a half-dozen pharma and device companies. He then went on to lead multiple healthcare companies where he honed an instinct for separating durable business models from hype.

That instinct has led to a wide-ranging, successful operating career. At GuideWell, he was COO and President, helping to grow the company to over $20 billion in revenue. More recently at Elevance (formerly Anthem), he launched and grew the Diversified Business Group 6X in just three years. During COVID, he navigated an internal transformation in the behavioral health area that permanently shifted the organization from less than 1% digital to over 30%. All while building one of the largest peer-to-peer behavioral health networks in the country.

Today, Prakash is focused on all aspects of realizing value-based specialty care, an area he believes is the defining next chapter of healthcare reform. He is on an entrepreneurial journey of his own, building something exciting in the cardiology space. His operating philosophy is clear-eyed and grounded: technology alone cannot solve material healthcare problems, and the most important question to ask of any solution is not “how good is the tech?” but whether it is material, meaningful, measurable, and manageable. We think that framework is essential to every early-stage health founder’s mindset. Stress-test your assumptions!

“Value-based care is absolutely real. There is nobody saying they want more fee-for-service. But it’s incumbent on all of us to turn those words into better outcomes and experiences for providers and patients,” says Dr. Patel. “The next big phase is not going to be primary care. It’s going to be high-cost, chronic, longitudinal, specialty care. I look forward to supporting Reach companies working to get that right.”

Prakash joins our phenomenal and growing healthcare advisory group alongside Stuart Parmenter, Hannah Galvin, Adina Safer, Julia Bernstein, and Rob Purinton. 

If you’re a healthcare founder building A+ technology to maximize access, affordability, and outcomes while unleashing the full potential of clinicians and care systems, let’s chat! Please reach out to caoimhe@reachcapital.com. 

Welcome Prakash!