No Worries Paytient makes getting sick feel better. PHOTOS BY SCHAEFER PHOTOGRAPHY
“If you work in a hospital for a decade, you’ll see people experiencing life’s biggest moments. In one hall, it’s tears of elation as loved ones celebrate new life coming into their world. Down another, the somber remembrances of a life well lived. And everywhere else is everything in between.”
B
rian Whorley, founder and CEO of Paytient, has seen firsthand the emotional hills and valleys that patients and their families experience in their health care journeys, and he has made it his company’s mission to make the journey easier. He is proud that his company helps people better access and afford care, and candidly shares his perspective on the future of health care. THE CONFUSION OF CARE “In the early 2000s, the industry had this notion that as patients assume greater out-of-pocket responsibility, they would self-discover this ability to better navigate the health system since they were bearing first-dollar risk,” Whorley says. “I don’t know if that came true. “Even for folks like myself who worked in health care most of our careers, the health system can be a hard thing to explain from the inside and an even harder thing to understand from the outside. There’s this uncertainty that is under the surface of the experience for patients. It starts from the first moment you feel unwell and you start wondering ... ‘Hmm, what’s wrong? Should I see someone? Who’s the best person to see? What will it cost?’ I think that’s why there’s this baseline level of anxiety or perhaps even frustration with the health care system as we know it. Our ability to understand it, from a consumer perspective, hasn’t kept pace with our increasing responsibility of paying for it when we have to experience it. “Give anyone—high-, middle-, or low-income—an unexpected expense that they feel like they didn’t have any voice or choice in creating and that’s just a super-frustrating experience.
18 | Maverick • Fall 2021
