Founded by nationally recognized experts on health disparities and run by Michele Courton Brown, Quality Interactions’ e-learning courses train healthcare professionals to communicate with and care for diverse patient populations to improve patient experience, improve health outcomes and financial results. Clients, including hospitals and health plans can also access organizational assessments, live training & a web-based population health resource site.
Traction:
- 140K learners
- Work with the top 7 of the 8 top health plans
The following is the transcript from a conversation with Michele Courton Brown, CEO of Quality Interactions.
Why did you choose Quality Interactions? What is the story, moment or reason that drives you? I am not a physician, I don’t play one on screen or elsewhere. I have always been committed to roles where there is a social justice mission and a business imperative. For a long time I ran a corporate foundation but I’ve also advised individuals around their philanthropy and worked in education reform and healthcare. The reason why this company appealed to me, is that I’ve seen first hand what health disparities look like. When I was 26 years old I had a stomach ache and I went to the hospital. I wasn’t wearing my professional garb, didn’t look like a business executive and I laid on a gurney for 12 hours while the hospital continued to test me for something I didn’t have. In the meantime, I had a ruptured appendix that had turned septic and I nearly died. What was clear to me in that moment, when I recovered from surgery, was that people make assumptions around whether I was indigent or something else and it affected my care so this lives deeply with me.
Most memorable moment on your entrepreneurship journey? The most recent memorable moment I had was working with a client, which happens to be a large regional health plan, and they invited us in to do both e-learning but to also support their curriculum development and building their capacity for cultural competency around their learning and I got to sit with some customer service reps and they started talking about what some of their challenges are and what we saw almost immediately was how real these cultural competencies are, that they’re part of their everyday life.
Biggest challenge to date? The biggest challenge we have is beginning to identify how we’re going to accelerate our growth. We believe that we’re at the tip of the iceberg and we want to grow smart and one of the reasons we’re very excited about this program is that we’re meeting and connecting with really knowledgable who are helping us think about really smart ways of doing that. We’d get there eventually, without LearnLaunch, but we’re going to get there faster and more strategically with leaders and people who have proven experience and can help pave the way. So, maybe we’ll make fewer mistakes and we’ll be more focused and more successful quicker
Why LearnLaunch? There are a couple reasons LearnLaunch has been really intriguing to us. One, is that you are at the vanguard of what’s happening in Edtech. This is a niche space that not a lot of people understand. Of the many resources we’re getting out of this experience is some real knowledge about best practices with learning management systems, pitching and VC landscape and as an under resourced company we can spend precious resources in the wrong way trying to figure out where our people are. And you help us do that.
Look forward to a year from now, what are some of your biggest successes in ‘17?
I have 3 goals for this year:
- Deepen our product offering
- Manage our technology requirements
- Get access to capital
Even though this is the first month of this program I feel like we’re well on our way to actualize on all three of those.
*Want to get in touch with Michele? Send her an email: [email protected]