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Congrats on a great site, and the exciting news around joining YC! One quick question: << If Watsi didn't exist, many of the patients on our site would have l

Congrats on a great site, and the exciting news around joining YC! One quick question: << If Watsi didn't exist, many of the patients on our site would have likely died. >> If a surgery isn't funding in time to save a patient's life, would you fund the remaining amount of the loan out of your own funds?

DigitalJack 14y ago
Yep. Take a look at their transparency document [1]. It links to all their patients so far, and also provides information about treatments postponed, status updates, etc. In one of the updates, the patient passed away before treatment [2]. Funding was refunded. [1] Transparency Document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah3wJ9CRQzyHdDZSaEF1X1JsRm1yZ251d0RQZ0VmRGc&gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah3wJ9CRQzyHdDZ... [2] Update info: http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4ee1aaad2e315a0de585af615&id=6331dcdcb2 http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4ee1aaad2e315a0de585af61...
chaseadam17 14y ago
Yes, we guarantee funding for all patients on our site by leaving profiles posted until they are fully funded. Also, we give our partners permission to pre-treat a patient in the event they need immediate care, so long as we've already accepted the profile. We then reimburse the partner for the cost of treatment once the profile is fully funded. In the event we have more profiles than we can fund (never been the case so far) we will accept and post the lowest-cost, highest-impact profiles first. However, we can do a pretty good job of avoiding this situation by growing our partners (and thus our volume of potential patients) at a rate that corresponds with the speed at which donor demand is increasing.
- kanamekun 14y ago
  If your doctors do "pre-treat" patients, please be very careful! If patients are regularly pre-treated, then the 1:1 connection between donor and patient could be seen as less pure (if the surgery already happened, it isn't 100% clear that the users' donations funded that specific surgery - as opposed to just being a general donation to a Medical Partner's operating budget). A similar criticism was made of Kiva, as covered by the NYT here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/global/09kiva.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/global/09kiva.htm... It's really important to disclose the date of any surgeries. And if a surgery has been performed prior to the profile being fully funded (or even prior to posting), the date of the surgery should be displayed and the profile should be labeled as pre-treated. Just want to make sure you guys avoid some of the growing pains of Kiva! (I used to run Marketing over there for a bunch of 2010/2011.) Good luck!

DigitalJack 14y ago

Yep. Take a look at their transparency document [1]. It links to all their patients so far, and also provides information about treatments postponed, status updates, etc. In one of the updates, the patient passed away before treatment [2]. Funding was refunded. [1] Transparency Document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah3wJ9CRQzyHdDZSaEF1X1JsRm1yZ251d0RQZ0VmRGc&gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah3wJ9CRQzyHdDZ... [2] Update info: http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4ee1aaad2e315a0de585af615&id=6331dcdcb2 http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4ee1aaad2e315a0de585af61...

chaseadam17 14y ago

Yes, we guarantee funding for all patients on our site by leaving profiles posted until they are fully funded. Also, we give our partners permission to pre-treat a patient in the event they need immediate care, so long as we've already accepted the profile. We then reimburse the partner for the cost of treatment once the profile is fully funded. In the event we have more profiles than we can fund (never been the case so far) we will accept and post the lowest-cost, highest-impact profiles first. However, we can do a pretty good job of avoiding this situation by growing our partners (and thus our volume of potential patients) at a rate that corresponds with the speed at which donor demand is increasing.

kanamekun 14y ago
If your doctors do "pre-treat" patients, please be very careful! If patients are regularly pre-treated, then the 1:1 connection between donor and patient could be seen as less pure (if the surgery already happened, it isn't 100% clear that the users' donations funded that specific surgery - as opposed to just being a general donation to a Medical Partner's operating budget). A similar criticism was made of Kiva, as covered by the NYT here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/global/09kiva.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/global/09kiva.htm... It's really important to disclose the date of any surgeries. And if a surgery has been performed prior to the profile being fully funded (or even prior to posting), the date of the surgery should be displayed and the profile should be labeled as pre-treated. Just want to make sure you guys avoid some of the growing pains of Kiva! (I used to run Marketing over there for a bunch of 2010/2011.) Good luck!