Five-Lever Healthcare Investment Screen
Score healthcare ventures on access, outcomes, cost, speed, and friction
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 96%
The framework evaluates a healthcare venture through five practical levers: access, outcomes, cost, speed, and friction. Begin with the population and workflow being changed, then identify which levers improve and how those improvements can be measured. Lamont indicates that a company need not maximize every dimension, but it should produce a convincing improvement in at least two. The analysis must also consider incentives because better technology will not reliably change care when providers, payers, or patients benefit from maintaining the old process. The result is a concise investment thesis connecting a product’s mechanism to tangible healthcare value rather than relying on novelty, market excitement, or generic claims of disruption.
Origin
Annie Lamont describes these levers as central to Oak HC/FT's mission of lowering healthcare costs, improving outcomes, and improving patient experience. Extracted from Masters in Business.
Core principles
- 01Healthcare innovation should produce measurable practical benefits.
- 02Access and patient experience matter alongside financial efficiency.
- 03A strong investment should materially improve at least two levers.
- 04Technology is valuable when it changes care delivery rather than merely digitizing it.
- 05Financial incentives should align providers with better patient outcomes.
How to run it
- 1
Define the Care Problem
Specify the patient population, customer, workflow, and failure being addressed. Establish what happens today and why it produces poor results.
Pro tip Use a concrete patient journey rather than a broad market description.
Watch out Do not assume that deploying software automatically improves care.
- 2
Assess Access
Determine whether the solution makes appropriate care available to more people, in more locations, or at more useful times.
Pro tip Check underserved rural, low-income, elderly, and high-acuity populations separately.
Watch out Nominal availability is not meaningful access if patients cannot afford or use it.
- 3
Assess Outcomes and Experience
Identify the clinical, operational, or quality outcomes expected to improve and how the patient experience changes.
Pro tip Prefer metrics that can be compared with a baseline or control population.
Watch out Avoid treating satisfaction alone as proof of clinical improvement.
- 4
Assess Cost and Speed
Calculate whether the solution reduces total cost and accelerates diagnosis, treatment, payment, or administrative work.
Pro tip Include avoided hospital admissions and downstream expenses where appropriate.
Watch out A cheaper individual interaction can still increase total spending through excess utilization.
- 5
Assess Friction
Map the steps removed for patients, clinicians, caregivers, and administrators. Favor solutions that work within existing behavior and make frontline work easier.
Pro tip Observe the workflow directly before assigning a friction score.
Watch out Benefits that require extensive behavior change may not survive implementation.
- 6
Test Alignment and Select
Verify who pays, who benefits, and who bears the risk. Proceed when incentives align and at least two levers show credible, measurable gains.
Pro tip Connect payment to the outcome the solution is supposed to produce.
Watch out Misaligned incentives can neutralize an otherwise excellent product.
In the wild
A care-management company gives medically complex patients and caregivers immediate virtual access to nurses who know their records. Instead of automatically sending every patient concern to an emergency room, the team triages the issue and arranges appropriate local or home-based care.
→ The model improves access and patient experience while reducing costly and potentially harmful hospital use.
A rural health company combines local clinical relationships with virtual specialists and wraparound services. Patients receive more care near home while distant experts advise on cases that would otherwise require lengthy travel.
→ The model expands specialist access, reduces friction, and can prevent unnecessary hospital episodes.
Common mistakes
Counting Features Instead of Outcomes
A long feature list does not demonstrate better access, care, affordability, speed, or usability. Trace each feature to a measurable change.
Demanding All Five Levers
A venture may be compelling without improving every dimension. Lamont's stated rule allows a strong case when at least two materially improve.
Ignoring Financial Alignment
Organizations rarely sustain preventive care when their contracts reward expensive downstream utilization. Examine incentives as part of the mechanism.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for evaluating healthcare technologies, care-delivery models, and operational improvement proposals.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for pure biotechnology investments whose value depends primarily on scientific efficacy.
From the transcript
“access, outcome, cost, speed, and friction”
“So you don't always do all three, but at least two of them.”
“it's all about part of this is financial alignment.”
From the episode
Challenging the Status Quo of Healthcare Investment with Annie Lamont
Annie Lamont