Creating Accessibility: Talking Prevention, and Healthcare Access and Innovation

In the latest episode of “Highway to Health,” host David Kemp discussed the issue of unattainable healthcare with Molecular Testing Lab’s new CEO, Eric Strafel. Kemp stated that healthcare workers have a daily goal to make a great impact in the lives of their patients, and also make significant improvements. For Strafel, he said Molecular Testing Lab is closing a gap in access with at-home services. A lot of factors play a role in how people in certain areas of the country access personal healthcare, and these differing components have an effect on that. 

“When you look at the social determinants to health, it’s the environment, physical, social, and access to care that people have in their community, which varies widely,” said Strafel. Offering at-home service to patients, particularly to patients in underserved and rural areas, makes it a great solution to providing care and creating accessibility. 

A key solution for this is directly looking to the areas and demographics of where and who is not getting good access to healthcare. Not only does this service bring healthcare to homes where some patients might have certain fears like white-coat syndrome, or worry about stigmas in regarding to sexual health tests, it helps them get ahead of certain illnesses. “We can try to get testing to communities that have a hard time getting testing … so people can test for chronic conditions, therefore get in front of it so they can get into preventive health instead of trying to deal with an issue when it’s already too late,” said Strafel.  

Strafel agreed with Kemp that Molecular Testing Lab is disrupting many healthcare norms with their innovation. He said that testing is only a fraction of the greater solution. He said that while his company is only trying to play a small role and is more focused on forging partnerships with other organizations, he believes that healthcare’s innovation will mostly come from small and mid-sized companies, and not from one particular major corporation.