A Healthy Dose: The Tireless, Yet Incredibly Rewarding Journey of a Healthcare Entrepreneur with Dr. Ellie Stang, founder & CEO of Progeny
Dr. Ellie Stang is a board-certified pediatrician and the founder & CEO of ProgenyHealth, a Philadelphia-based healthcare company that improves care management and health outcomes for premature and medically complex newborns.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
1: The entrepreneur journey is always hard, but the complexity of the healthcare system makes this journey 10 times harder.
Ellie left her high paying, prestigious job to start Progeny, bootstrapping the business for 14 years and working out of her basement for the first three years. Her path was a tireless journey. It took three years to sign her first customer, but today Progeny is used in over 90% of the NICUs in America.
2: Why entrepreneur-product-market fit matters — especially in healthcare.
Ellie was driven by the mission to do something bigger than herself. Having spent her entire career in healthcare, first as a pediatrician and later as the Regional Medical Director at Keystone Mercy Health Plan, she understood the issues first hand. Costs in the NCIU kept rising year over year, inefficiencies often kept babies in longer than needed, and parents were frequently left in the dark. In this industry, in particular, we often find that years of first-hand healthcare experience are what give the entrepreneur both the drive to make the system better, and the knowledge required to make change happen.
3: Why Progeny is a great example of the double bottom line business in healthcare — you can do good, and create a great business.
Half a million babies born across the U.S. each year are premature. The first experience for these parents is their babies being whisked away to the intensive care unit, hooked up to tubes and wires. Ellie built Progeny to create efficiencies within the NCIU. Prior to Progeny the average stay of a baby in the NCIU was 20 days. With Progeny the average stay is 16 days!
Steve Kraus is recognized as one of the top healthcare investors in the country, with a unique combination of VC, healthcare and policy experience. He serves on the Massachusetts Digital Health Council, as an advisor to Boston Children’s Hospital, BCBS MA, and Rock Health, and co-hosts “A Healthy Dose” — a podcast focused on healthcare innovation, policy and trends. Listen and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud.
