Cityblock Co-Founder, Toyin Ajayi: What Happens When You Treat Healthcare as a Right, Not a Transaction?

Today, we're joined by Toyin Ajayi, co-founder and CEO of Cityblock Health and a former doctor who trained in the NHS before taking on the US healthcare.

Toyin built Cityblock to serve people on Medicaid. The company is now around $1.5bn in annual revenue, with 150,000 members across 11 states. Tommy Stadlen talks to her about her giant idea, value-based care: why she thinks paying doctors for procedures instead of real outcomes is the root of America's healthcare crisis, why the patients who need care most are the least likely to walk into a clinic, and why she believes AI poured onto the wrong business model will do real damage.

She speaks about:

• Why "value-based care" is the worst brand for one of the biggest ideas in healthcare
• The first Cityblock patient, an elderly, partially blind man living in a Brooklyn basement
• Why fee-for-service ends up paying more for the amputation than for keeping someone safe at home
• The ~140 million Americans on Medicaid and Medicare, and the market everyone missed
• How AI is pushing the marginal cost of a patient interaction close to zero
• Why most healthcare AI dollars are making the system more expensive, not better
• Growing up in Nairobi during the AIDS epidemic, and the UN moment that outraged her and still drives her
• NHS vs US healthcare - and the one-line answer to which she'd choose...

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

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