From Underserved Care to Startup Leadership: Why Gap-Closing Translates Across Both Worlds

In this episode, Helen sits down with Dr. Neil Patel, a family physician with more than 20 years of clinical practice and over 15 years as an early clinical leader in healthcare startups. Neil was part of the founding team at Iora Health and later served as Chief Health Officer at Patina Health, carrying lessons across multiple stages of company building, including growth, scale, and closure.

Neil reflects on how his early career in underserved and FQHC settings shaped the way he approaches innovation. He explains why clinicians drawn to community health are often the same people pulled toward startups — not because the environments are similar, but because both require identifying gaps and building solutions where infrastructure is incomplete.

The conversation explores why humility is a core leadership skill, why starting from a blank slate is often the real cheat code to innovation, and how listening like a clinician translates directly into leading teams, products, and organizations. Neil also shares how serving freelancers at Iora expanded his definition of “underserved,” why access to care is one of the most overlooked areas for innovation, and why founding teams work better when responsibility for outcomes is shared.

This episode goes deep on closing gaps rather than chasing solutions — and why meaningful innovation happens when leaders stay humble enough to let patients, teams, and data lead the work.

For clinicians navigating startup life, this conversation offers grounded perspective from someone who has lived multiple chapters — and chosen to start over.

Mentioned in the Episode:

• Latino Health Access

About Dr. Patel

Dr. Neil Patel is a family physician with more than 20 years of clinical practice and over 15 years as an early clinical leader in healthcare startups. He was part of the founding team at Iora Health, an early innovator in primary care, and later served as Chief Health Officer at Patina Health, a geriatric care startup focused on reimagining aging through virtual and home-based care.

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Join The Early Hires Community

Are you a clinician navigating startup life? The only way to access our private Slack community is by visiting www.theearlyhires.com.

Head to the website to request access and join clinicians who are building, leading, and navigating the realities of early-stage healthcare companies.

Share your challenges. Share your wins. Ask your questions.

Start at www.theearlyhires.com.
The conversation continues there.

Just because you are doing everything right clinically does not mean the organization will survive.

In this episode, Helen sits down with Katie Davis, a nurse practitioner and clinician executive who has spent more than two decades building care models across hospital systems and early-stage healthcare startups. Katie has served as a founding and early clinical leader in multiple venture-backed companies, helping design and operationalize care for high-risk populations in fast-moving environments.

Katie shares her path from taking a 50 percent pay cut to join her first telehealth startup to spending five years building a clinically successful company that ultimately shut down. She reflects on the hard lessons that came with that experience and how it reshaped the way she leads.

Together, Helen and Katie unpack the shift many clinicians struggle with in startups, moving from being the person who flags every risk to the leader who says yes and figures out how to make it work. They explore the tension between mission and margin, why a growth mindset matters more than perfection, and how failure becomes a necessary teacher when building something new.

Now running her own fractional leadership practice, Health Shift Leaders, Katie is focused on helping clinicians learn the business of healthcare faster and with fewer painful lessons. This conversation is full of honest insight for any clinician navigating startup leadership, uncertainty, and growth.

Must-Hear Insights and Key Moments

• Her first startup built telehealth for skilled nursing facilities before it was commonly done.
• Katie shifted from pointing out obstacles to saying yes and figuring out how to make things work
• Board relationships from her first startup created opportunities years later

Mentioned in the episode:

• HealthShift Leaders
• Y Combinator
• The Heart of Healthcare Podcast

About Katie

Katie Davis is a board-certified adult gerontology acute care nurse practitioner and advanced forensic nurse with over 20 years of experience across hospital systems, health tech, telemedicine, and post-acute care. She has served as a founding and early clinical leader in multiple healthcare startups, building and scaling clinical operations for high-risk populations.

Katie spent five years at her first telehealth startup serving skilled nursing facilities and four years at her second startup, where she was the first nurse practitioner hired and helped scale operations to 15,000 patients per month. She is the founder of HealthShift Leaders, a fractional leadership practice, and is building a new company focused on teaching clinicians the business of healthcare.

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Join The Early Hires Community

Are you a clinician navigating startup life? The only way to access our private Slack community is by visiting www.theearlyhires.com.

Head to the website to request access and join clinicians who are building, leading, and navigating the realities of early-stage healthcare companies.

Share your challenges. Share your wins. Ask your questions.

Start at www.theearlyhires.com.
The conversation continues there.

Patient safety is job one. Everything else is negotiable.

The Early Hires launches with Dr. Adam Perry — a geriatrician and ER physician who has helped build home-based and senior care models across early- and mid-stage healthcare companies. He has served as a Chief Medical Officer and Regional Medical Director, and he is now the founder of Health Span Partners.

In this pilot episode, Dr. Perry breaks down what clinician leaders need to understand on day one: early-stage work is about protecting patient safety while learning how the business stays alive. Mid-stage work is different — more resources, more complexity, and harder decisions about what to standardize, refine, and scale.

You will hear why clinicians must become interpreters between business and clinical teams, how to translate clinical risk into language executives actually act on, and the uncomfortable truth many clinicians miss: you are often the revenue engine — through your work, your NPI, and even your licensure. He also shares what to ask before you sign an offer, how to think about equity, and why “who owns the company” shapes everything.

If you are considering a startup role — or already in the ambiguity of early clinical leadership — this episode is a practical reset on how to lead with clarity, protect patients, and stay aligned with reality.

Welcome to The Early Hires.

Must-Hear Insights and Key Moments

• In early-stage startups, clinician leaders are first and foremost advocates for patient safety — one of the few priorities that rarely requires translation to the business side.
• Dr. Perry recommends getting legal or accounting advice on equity offers because the structures vary dramatically

Mentioned in the episode:

• GUIDE Dementia Care Program
• Healthspan Partners
• American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE)
• John Hartford Foundation
• Gary and Mary West Foundation

About Dr. Perry

Dr. Adam Perry is a geriatrician and emergency medicine physician with over 20 years of experience building innovative care models for older adults. He has served as Chief Medical Officer and Regional Medical Director for early and mid-stage healthcare startups focused on home-based acute care, hospital at home, and primary care.

A John Hartford Foundation fellow, Dr. Perry helped lead the geriatric emergency department movement nationwide. He is currently founder of Healthspan Partners, participating in the CMS Guide Dementia Care program, delivering home-based care to older adults with dementia across multiple states.

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Join The Early Hires Community

Are you a clinician navigating startup life? The only way to access our private Slack community is by visiting www.theearlyhires.com.

Head to the website to request access and join clinicians who are building, leading, and navigating the realities of early-stage healthcare companies.

Share your challenges. Share your wins. Ask your questions.

Start at www.theearlyhires.com.
The conversation continues there.