Among the many disheartening trends in healthcare, one of most insidious has been the slow but inexorable decline of independent physician practices, as more and more physicians exit private independent practice, opting instead for employed positions within hospitals, healthcare systems, or private equity groups, a trend which actually accelerated after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Currently nearly 70% of U.S. physicians are employed by hospitals or corporate entities. Yes, nearly 3 out of every 4….

The reasons for this? “Anticompetitive contracting and payment practices by dominant insurers and hospital systems, high administrative costs, and regulatory compliance burden and expense” led to physician burnout according to this report from the Physicians Advocacy Institute:

In short, the healthcare industrial complex has resulted in what the PAI called “the startling shift toward the corporatization of healthcare” across the country.

The reality of this arrangement is a progressive receding of physician autonomy, as ownership, not just of a physician’s physical practice, but ownership of the patient-doctor relationship, is undermined by the subtle transformation of the physician into the hospital employee.

And this loss of ownership is driven by a progressive centralization of physicians’ communities and governance, with large corporate healthcare entities increasingly dictating the terms and conditions under which they deliver medical care.

Yet,

in a galaxy far, far away from the healthcare space, another movement is simultaneously arising, one that offers collective, decentralized ownership and governance of organizations, of entire economies. This ownership economy is being created through Web3, the technological framework underpinning some of the most innovative approaches to value creation across an ever-expanding variety of domains.

You may see a vicious and dispiriting dichotomy.

I see an opportunity.

Web3 is iterative. It borrows from what came before, and builds on it, adapts, expands. What works is forked, copied, improved. Walled-off data silos and lack of interoperability, two hallmarks of the modern healthcare industrial complex, become extinct in web3, because they are not useful to anyone. In web3 there are no out-of-network fees. There are no non-compete clauses.

We must bring this approach to healthcare. We must bring ownership back to the physicians and medical professionals; ownership of the way medical expertise is utilized, leveraged, amplified. In this way a new value layer can exist within healthcare, outside of the confines of hospital wards, OR’s and offices.

What is needed is a digital platform for physicians to align themselves globally into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Leveraging the existing organizational structure of medical sub-specialties, this platform will serve as a base-layer for others in at the intersection of web3 and healthcare to build on, and organically grow. The ultimate aim is to exponentially increase the distribution of medical expertise to patients, government agencies, the legal system, medical device and pharmaceutical industries, and medical researchers.

And ownership will be restored to the core of the practice of medicine.

This is what we are working toward at MedDAO.

Come join us…

MedDAO.xyz