Johnny Luo started his company Doctor’s Choice four years ago to help eligible patients better understand Medicare.
Today, Doctor’s Choice has a main office in Warwick with 14 people, and the company does business in 25 states. The startup primarily helps big companies give retiring employees resources and educational tools about Medicare. Luo’s underlying goal is to reduce the barriers patients must overcome to access health care.
“This is us trying to make health care more understandable,” Luo says.
Luo used to get a lot of questions about Medicare Health Plans from elderly patients when he was finishing his clinical training in Rhode Island. That made him realize there weren’t many resources available to help patients understand their post-retirement options.
“Medicare was very confusing for most people,” Luo says. “They had lots of questions.”
Luo decided he wanted to improve healthcare delivery in the U.S. when he was finishing medical school. He took in an interest in understanding the insurance industry, which felt “like a big black box they don’t teach you about in medical school.”
Doctor’s Choice initially started as an independent study project, and has since turned into a real company. Luo says Doctor’s Choice is flooded with requests from companies that want to work with his team today.
“We really enjoy working with companies that believe in providing great benefits to their employees,” Luo says. “We are an extension of their human resources department.”
Luo says the company has evolved since its early days, adding that it was old school at the start; his team did house calls to educate clients. Today, Luo is trying to reach more people through online resources. Luo also published a book last year called "Retiree's Guide to Medicare" to help more people navigate the anxiety-provoking process.
Doctor’s Choice is paid by insurance companies when a client signs up for a Medicare health care plan, similar to how the airlines pay Kayak.com each time a ticket is booked through that website, Luo explains.
“When we help someone enroll, we get a fee,” Luo says. “We get to independently shop-out options for you.”
Doctor’s Choice has hired four new employees in the last three months and he’s looking to add more. He says he prefers to train new employees from the ground up, since Doctor’s Choice is so specialized.
“Our goal is to grow and to add jobs here,” Luo says. “It’s hard to find the talent off the shelf that does what we want to do with the same culture.”
In five years, Luo hopes Doctor’s Choice will be covering all 50 states.
