MedCoShare Is Revitalizing Independent Healthcare Practices Through Medical Co-Working Spaces
Ronak Vyas, Dr. Greg Goldmacher, Anthony Khan, and Amit Mundade are creating medical co-working spaces that empower independent healthcare providers with the flexibility to practice on their terms. This new approach will help healthcare professionals break free from the constraints of traditional healthcare settings, redefine the future of healthcare, and improve patient access to quality care.
The Challenge
Imagine this: you’re a healthcare provider, dedicated to treating the sick and keeping people healthy. Your passion and expertise know no bounds, but the practice environment keeps getting harder. If you work for a hospital or a large group practice, you spend an enormous amount of time on paperwork and navigating the complexities of the system rather than taking care of patients.
Like many of your colleagues, you would love to have more flexibility in your practice. Maybe you’d like to start your own practice and run it your way. Or, perhaps you have a practice, but you would like the flexibility to work part-time due to family obligations. Maybe you would like to reach patients in different areas, to expand both your practice and access to quality care for patients.
If you want any of these things, there is a challenge that sets you apart from professionals in other fields. Traditional medical office space does not allow experimentation, flexibility, or significant degrees of freedom for healthcare providers, so you cannot practice the way you would like to. Imagine how frustrating and demoralizing it would be if architects couldn’t design the buildings they wanted or artists had to paint within prescribed lines, just because they couldn’t find a space to let their creativity shine.
This is the challenge many healthcare providers face in their career. The upfront cost and risk of opening a practice keep them from striking out on their own, and the restrictions of traditional medical office leases make trying novel models, such as hybrid telemedicine/face-to-face practices, impossible for an independent provider.
If you are frustrated, and have no way to try another way to practice, you might give up and leave healthcare practice entirely, as many have done in recent years. But, before giving up and going into a different career, you find MedCoShare: a revolutionary concept for co-working spaces for healthcare providers, which offers a flexible workspace and a supportive community where you can thrive.
Origin Story
Ronak Vyas, an expert in commercial real estate, had no direct healthcare experience other than being a patient, but he dealt with many healthcare clients and noticed a gap between what healthcare providers wanted and what landlords were willing to offer them.
Landlords seek credit-worthy, long-term tenants who can support their financing needs. Tenants must sign long leases and then spend tremendous time and effort to fit out and set up their space. Medical tenants, on the other hand, need short-term commitments and minimal upfront costs, if they want to grow a new practice or if they want to seek work-life balance by seeing patients part-time.
Ronak had seen co-working growing in other industries and realized that medical co-working could bridge this gap. However, he was still dubious about the idea because when he researched the concept, he found very few companies in the country exploring this idea and none in Philadelphia, a city of millions. Ronak wanted someone to provide him with honest feedback, and he knew exactly who he should turn to — Greg Goldmacher, MD, PhD.
Greg was a physician who had gone into clinical research but was still deeply immersed in the healthcare community. Ronak knew Greg from his time at Temple University, where they attended many of the same classes and even collaborated on the capstone project for an MBA program — developing a business plan for a heart and vascular center.
Ronak valued Greg’s frank and realistic feedback and thought that if anyone could poke holes in this business idea, that was Greg. Much to his delight, Greg saw great potential in Ronak’s idea and thought the challenges of such a novel approach could be overcome through strong execution. This reassurance motivated Ronak to move forward with the plan. To bolster their team, Ronak and Greg brought in two more partners — Amit Mundade and Anthony Khan — an engineer turned real estate entrepreneur and an expert project manager with a healthcare background. In late 2019, they launched their medical co-working venture.
Unfortunately, just as they found their first space and signed the lease in January 2020, the pandemic struck. This made refitting and preparing the space difficult and expensive (just getting a construction permit took months), but they were committed and believed in the strength of the concept, so they pushed forward. In the uncertainty of the pandemic, it was harder to launch a major new undertaking, but paradoxically this could be a selling point for healthcare providers who wanted to try something new with little risk.
As vaccination rates increased and the world adapted to the new normal, the demand for their medical co-working space grew. The key driver behind this demand was the dissatisfaction of many doctors and medical professionals with their employment status. They sought more autonomy, flexibility, and independence, which were challenging to achieve within traditional institutional structures. In addition, many doctors — especially those concerned with elective procedures, such as plastic surgery — were furloughed during the pandemic.
Ronak and Greg’s medical co-working model offered such doctors a short-term, affordable space to practice on their terms. This could be a part-time practice for a new provider or one moving towards retirement, part-time use of a physical office for hybrid telemedicine practices, short-term exploration of satellite locations for an existing practice, and many other uses. By eliminating the need for long-term commitments and high upfront costs, doctors could explore new practice models without financial burdens.
Another crucial aspect that has contributed to MedCoShare’s success is the suite of services that the company is developing to support providers within their co-working spaces. Real estate and payroll are the two biggest costs associated with starting a private practice. MedCoShare addressed the real estate component by offering flexible and less-risky solutions. To tackle staffing issues, it enabled doctors to contract medical assistants on an hourly basis.
A third pain point they addressed was marketing. Many private practices struggle to navigate the complexities of marketing their services effectively. Ronak and Greg established an in-house marketing division to help doctors build their brands, establish a social media presence, and create professional websites.
Since signing its first lease in January 2020, MedCoShare has made remarkable progress. Despite the initial challenges caused by the pandemic, the team secured early investors, raising essential funds to start their venture. The break-even point for their first office in Philadelphia took nearly 14 months. To fuel its growth and create a broader impact, MedCoShare ran a successful crowdfunding campaign, attracting contributions from individuals who believed in their vision. With the funds they raised they expanded to Marlton, NJ, in February 2022 and impressively achieved break-even within eight months. Following up on this success, they recently opened their third location in King of Prussia, PA, and the momentum has been exceptional. With four providers already signed up, and interest pouring in from professionals, they have proven that the demand for medical co-working spaces is real and substantial.
Ronak, Greg, and their team have ambitious plans for the future. They aim to expand their footprint to cover various regions, starting in the Northeast and growing to Texas, Florida, and to ultimately achieve a nationwide presence. Nonetheless, their goal isn’t to have the highest number of locations but to support and empower their clients with the services they need to thrive in their medical practices.
To achieve this, the team has strategically thought about its location development strategy that focuses on creating clusters of co-working spaces. Their existing locations are within a half-hour’s drive of one another, offering medical providers easy access to different patient markets and maximizing their outreach. This clustering strategy proves especially valuable for specialists who rely on surgeries to generate income, as it allows them to pull patients from various markets and achieve greater success compared to traditional single-location practices.
As they expand to other cities, MedCoShare plans to continue this clustering approach by establishing two or three co-working spaces simultaneously, creating a more significant impact and serving diverse medical communities. MedCoShare could evolve as a robust support system for medical professionals looking to pursue private practice.
Under The Hood
MedCoShare runs on the innovative concept of medical co-working spaces, where medical professionals can rent examination rooms and offices with a basic, clean setup on a short-term basis, access the assistance they need on an hourly basis, and share space containing essential medical equipment with other providers. This business model allows medical professionals to have a physical presence without the burden of long-term leases or high upfront expenses.
Additionally, MedCoShare offers comprehensive support services to its members. These services range from maintaining short lists of preferred providers for referrals to providing technical underpinnings, like electronic health record integration and API access for patient records. The company also offers in-house marketing to help medical professionals build personal brands, establish their social media presence, and create professional websites.
Beyond practical support, MedCoShare also seeks to cultivate a sense of community and networking among the providers. Since the co-working spaces focus on productivity and efficiency during business hours, currently these efforts happen outside business hours in the form of events where professionals can meet and interact. However, they have plans to encourage networking and socializing within the workspaces, which include providing spaces with lounges for more opportunities to connect.
MedCoShare proudly accommodates a diverse range of healthcare providers, from primary care and specialist physicians (such as cardiologists, dermatologists, and ENT surgeons) to non-MD providers like chiropractors and podiatrists. The model even welcomes providers who engage in side gigs, such as nurses performing skincare procedures alongside regular hospital jobs. The company’s openness toward customers has attracted telehealth companies seeking hybrid models, as it would allow them to see patients in person and expand their patient base.
As the venture grows, MedCoShare is committed to scaling up its support staff to efficiently assist healthcare providers with their individual needs. The goal is to offer a wide array of services to cater to the unique needs of each provider and foster a community of practice that encourages knowledge sharing and potential patient referrals among providers, promoting collaboration and patient-centered care.
Last Words
MedCoShare’s concept of medical co-working spaces holds tremendous potential for improving patient access to quality healthcare.
There is a shortage of healthcare providers in the US. One reason is the dissatisfaction many providers feel, leading them to explore other career paths, such as pharma or consulting. Consequently, health inequality in underserved areas has worsened, and wait times to see specialists have increased.
MedCoShare’s approach offers a solution by offering professionals greater flexibility and autonomy, which should help them remain in practice, and be able to access patient populations in multiple locations. As MedCoShare grows, the positive impact on patient happiness and access to care will increase significantly. In the future, we can expect the medical co-working model to become more widespread and a prominent narrative that tells how happier providers can deliver better care and effectively address the healthcare access challenges many communities face today.
→ Learn more and connect with MedCoShare
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