A startup company is quite different from large corporations in that they need to work much harder in order to stand out amongst the crowd. With the COVID-19 pandemic, many smaller companies will be unable to stay afloat. However, this also presents a new opportunity for innovation in improving the health and safety of all individuals.
As a SaaS (Software as a Service) company, Cortico Health Technologies is one of those companies that has capitalized on the increasing need for primary healthcare despite social distancing and lockdowns. I was very fortunate to work with Cortico and support them in growing and helping health clinics provide effective health care to patients throughout the pandemic.
Initially integrating with Oscar EMR, an electronic medical record that is accessible through computers, Cortico is able to greatly reduce the workload of healthcare staff by streamlining online appointment booking and facilitating virtual appointments in order to keep doctors, nurses, and MOAs (medical office assistants) healthy and safe.
I joined the team in January 2021 as a Customer Success Coordinator, which mainly focuses on ensuring that all clients are satisfied with the service and bridging the gap between health clinics and the development team. As a Health Sciences student, I didn’t have much business experience entering this job. It took a lot of learning to fully understand the ins and outs of Oscar EMR and how Cortico functions. Along the way, I was able to notice the challenges that Cortico, a startup company, faced as they grew.
Constant Improvements in our Services
The most outstanding aspect of Cortico that I noticed was the number of changes that were happening with the service as a whole. As a team, we discuss all the changes that are proposed, either through testing or user feedback. In order for the company to grow, the service needs to grow as well. So every week there will be new updates to our services, which include either new features, optimizations, or bug fixes. Smaller changes, which consist of minor bug fixes or optimizations, are constantly being released, allowing Cortico to improve over time and have a more polished service. Larger changes, which consist of new functionality for Cortico’s services, provides clinic staff with tools to further increase the value they receive.
I can say for certain that there have been a significant number of positive changes throughout my time at Cortico. Compared to 7 months ago when I first started, every aspect of Cortico’s services have gone through a significant amount of improvements. Being able to contribute to those changes and see the new, helpful features has been a great experience for me and allowed me to understand just how quickly things can change.
Innovation to Stand Out
Since there are larger companies out there that provide a similar service to Cortico, we need to be able to retain customers and also get new customers at a steady pace. Our marketing team is useful in identifying the features that other services have that we don’t, or features that they lack and we can capitalize on. Cortico is also very open to feedback from customers and clients, and will implement many changes based on the needs of our clients if we feel that it is useful to many Cortico users overall. The team is always ambitious in delivering something new to customers and improving their experience transitioning to an online platform since the pandemic started.
We have even gone to great lengths to improve the EMRs that clinics use with our browser plug-in, despite not officially working with those EMR services. As Cortico believes in improving primary health care services for all clinics, we have created a plug-in that is free to use for anyone. This plug-in adds a multitude of features that we felt are lacking in EMR services, but are very useful for clinic staff, so it is important for us to deliver this to clinics even though it is not a paid service.
Profit and Compromise
One of the biggest challenges for a startup company is being able to make a profit off the work that is done. Cortico currently has a much lower fee than other services to encourage customers to try our service. We also have multiple package tiers, optional equipment, and customizations that help bring in more profit while providing more services to the clinic. The sales team helps in bringing in a steady flow of new customers across the country (and even across the border).
Oftentimes we will compromise on pricing if we believe that it will bring more value to us down the road. For example, we will give a customer a slight discount on their service fees if they choose to pay annually, guaranteeing that they’ll be with us for at least a year. We have also given grandfathered rates to some of our earliest customers for taking a gamble on our service when it was new. Although Cortico’s prices are already lower than competitors, we are still flexible and willing to negotiate depending on what makes the most sense for our overall growth.
Wrap-Up
My Co-op at Cortico has been a great learning experience for me. Through my interactions with health clinics and patients, I am able to see many variations in how primary health care is structured. Cortico is a great service that strives to cater to as many of these variations as possible and is always open minded to improvements.
As a startup company, I feel that Cortico provides a very flexible service compared to larger corporations, because they need to provide new and innovative services to be able to compete. Overall, being able to contribute to improving primary health care and learn about the business aspect of it along the way has given me a very positive experience for my first Co-op job.
