Here Be Dragons: One Man's Quest to Make Healthcare More Accessible and Affordable

by Web Golinkin, Tom Charland (Foreword by)

Overview

Here Be Dragons is the true story of what happens when you are bold enough to try to transform a hidebound, multi-trillion-dollar industry. Today, millions of people benefit from accessible, affordable healthcare at walk-in clinics close to their homes and businesses that Web Golinkin and a small number of others pioneered. They are open seven days a week, with extended weekday hours, and provide high-quality basic healthcare at reasonable prices that are transparently presented. During the pandemic, almost everyone in the United States benefited from the access to COVID-19 testing and vaccinations that these clinics provided.

But retail clinics did not emerge without a fight. They faced strong opposition from the medical establishment, overly restrictive government regulations, and skeptical third-party payers. They also faced consumers who were conditioned to believe that quality healthcare could only be delivered in in an office or a hospital on someone else’s schedule and without having any idea of its cost. The system needed to be disrupted, and Web Golinkin was one of a relatively small number of people who were able to do it.

However, this is not a book about unbridled success. Like many hero’s journeys, Web’s story is filled with bumps, bruises, and a few dragons along the way. Web began his journey by focusing on health information, starting the first 24-hour Cable TV network dedicated to health, America’s Health Network, which was eventually sold to Fox. He then helped to revolutionize healthcare with RediClinic, which placed medical clinics inside drug, grocery and big box stores and was later sold to Rite Aid. Web is currently the CEO of FastMed, one of the nation’s largest operators of urgent care clinics.

The fact that walk-in clinics are now a permanent part of the healthcare landscape is evidence of success, but getting to this point was a wild and frequently very rough ride. Partially a story about the challenges of changing healthcare, and partially about creating new business models and leading organizations through challenging times, Here Be Dragons makes for fascinating reading on multiple levels.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781955884549
Publisher:	Advantage Media Group, Inc.
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

WEB GOLINKIN has focused his career on making health information and care more accessible and affordable. He has done this as CEO of five companies over the past 35 years, including three he co-founded.

These companies include the largest cable TV network devoted to health (America’s Health Network), one of the nation’s largest operators of retail-based clinics (RediClinic), a leading population health management company (Health Dialog), and one of the nation’s largest operators of urgent care clinics (FastMed). Web also co-founded the Convenient Care Association and served as its Chair for many years. He has been widely covered in the national media and has spoken at numerous healthcare conferences.

Web recently joined Babson Diagnostics as its President. Babson is a science-first company that has succeeded (after a decade of R&D) in doing what Theranos tried and famously failed to do – offer a broad menu of clinically accurate tests from a fingertip blood sample.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard, Web grew up in New York City and Long Island but has lived in Houston since 1988, so he is almost a Texan. A longtime runner and fitness enthusiast, Web enjoys tennis and golf—as long as he can walk and carry his bag. Web has been married to the same extraordinary woman for 40 years, and they have two amazing sons who make him proud every day.

TOM CHARLAND is the founder and former CEO of Merchant Medicine, LLC, a leading healthcare research and management consulting firm that was acquired in 2020 by Urgent Care Partners to form UCP Merchant Medicine. Tom introduced the concept of ConvUrgentCare® (pronounced convergent care), the mingling of operating tactics from convenient care (retail clinics), urgent care, work site clinics, primary care, and telemedicine. He started the annual Merchant Medicine Strategy Symposium, a conference that covers the on-demand medicine industry. He has been quoted on this subject in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, Fox News, Bloomberg, and other media outlets.

Table of Contents

Foreword Introduction
Chapter 1
Finding My Passion
Chapter 2
Learning to Be Bold
Chapter 3
Inventing Retail Clinics
Chapter 4
Turning the Corner
Chapter 5
Pushing the Envelope
Chapter 6
Securing a Strategic Investor
Chapter 7
From Entrepreneur to Corporate Executive
Chapter 8
Back on the Entrepreneurial Trail
Chapter 9
Building the Team and Facing the Government
Chapter 10
Out of the Frying Pan and into the Pandemic Fire
Chapter 11
Go Big or Go Home
Chapter 12
Leadership on the Razor's Edge
Epilogue
A Prescription for the Future
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Golinkin’s story is as inspirational as it is enlightening, highlighting the ups and downs of entrepreneurship alongside his radical efforts to save America’s healthcare system.”
– BookLife by Publishers Weekly

“With its suggestions for how the US health-care system might be improved, Here Be Dragons is an illuminating insider’s memoir.”
– Foreword Reviews

“Over 35 years, [Golinkin] would serve as the CEO of six companies [...] and would accomplish the seemingly impossible—make a genuine difference in a massive, impossibly complicated, and slow-shifting industry.”
– Kirkus Reviews

“Here Be Dragons is one book that I would encourage every aspiring entrepreneur to read before they take that first tentative step into the business world. The nuggets of wisdom in it are priceless.”
– Readers’ Favorite

Editorial Reviews

2023-12-07
In this memoir, a man recounts his extraordinary success as a serial entrepreneur and his attempts to provide affordable health care.

Golinkin contends that passion is a necessary component of leadership. He didn’t discover his life’s true passion—to make health care more accessible and affordable—until after he graduated from Harvard in 1974. While working for Reeves Communications, a producer of television shows, he became intoxicated with the idea of creating health-related programming and started his own company, American Medical Communications, in order to bring his dream to life. In the early ’90s, with the Mayo Clinic as his partner, he launched America’s Health Network, a cable enterprise devoted to wellness and medical issues, which he sold to Fox in 1998. In search of a new challenge and motivated to change a stagnant health care industry, he started RediClinic, an urgent care provider housed in stores such as Rite Aid, Walgreens, and Walmart. The obstacles to success he faced were extraordinary—stiff competition, a difficult business model with high fixed costs, a lumbering economy, and astonishingly prohibitive regulatory restrictions, all lucidly explained by the author, who writes in unfailingly clear prose. Over 35 years, he would serve as the CEO of six companies, including FastMed, another urgent care provider, and would accomplish the seemingly impossible—make a genuine difference in a massive, impossibly complicated, and slow-shifting industry. Golinkin’s accomplishments are quite impressive, and he limns a uniquely edifying view of the health care industry. He’s not a doctor or a “health policy wonk,” but rather a self-professed “capitalist” looking to make key improvements while amassing money. But he recounts the financial histories of his ventures in minute detail, a tendency that will eventually tax the attention of many readers. In addition, the lessons he draws are conventional—leaders should be passionate, maintain a work-life balance, and “find good people and help them grow.” His reflections on the inadequacies of the U.S. health care industry are far more intellectually rigorous; for example, he suggests that costs could be restrained if providers were guaranteed reimbursement for services rendered via “video, digital, telephonic, and even some forms of print communication,” an innovative recommendation. Still, readers will wish the author spent more time ruminating on these vital issues rather than the financial aspects of his businesses.

An engrossing but uneven account about a health care mission.

Kirkus Reviews