Episode 66: When End-Of-Life Care Isn't Careful, With Dr. Blaine Warkentine, Founder of Caregoals.com and Vimty

Raised in Boulder CO to a preschool teacher and lawyer, with an entrepreneurial mindset. I choose instead to follow a conservative path to medical school. In Orthopaedic residency I disliked just about everything I experienced. Everywhere I looked I found hierarchy, conservatism, and inefficiencies. My daily mantra was to leave as soon as possible. To become my own boss, and make money! This was a dangerous mindset to be in. I was not up to the task, and no amount of future money as a motivator was going to carry me through the 120 hour work weeks. I left in my fourth year to join a technology company. Within six years I had helped create an orthopaedic vertical that grew to 100M in revenue. But we managed to whittle away most of our profits reeducating surgeons.

And so when the iPhone/app store became available, and it came without a training manual. I knew the platform had the potential to scale. But even more valuable, at some point that scale would come from patients. My passion today is to pursue my best ideas that leverage mobile democratized health. I have spent time working for a dozen companies, gained an exec MBA, and worked in population health. I could not walk away from what I discovered. I felt I had to pursue the extreme burden of unwanted and low value care at end of life. After three years in that pursuit I feel that I have a meaningful understanding in how to usher in a new approach.