Ronald Dixon, MD
Chief Executive Officer
CareHive

An experienced, passionate health care leader, specializing in data-driven, technology-enabled chronic disease care. With 20+ years of experience, Ron is an innovator in medicine who is leading CareHive's vision to guide patients to the best clinical and financial outcomes with the lightest touch.

CareHive offers access to providers through a technology platform that leverages texting, video, sensor data, and escalation algorithms to manage urgent and chronic medical issues.

HTA - Tell us about your personal and professional background?

I’m an internal medicine doctor deeply passionate about data-driven digital health and chronic disease management. Over the past 20 years, I’ve focused on how bridging technology, data, and medicine can provide better care, better access, and lower health care costs. The best way to curb healthcare costs is to: 1) improve connections between providers and patients and 2) empower better chronic care management using data and technology. That’s the motivation for CareHive, a health technology and clinical services provider I helped launch in August 2021, that partners with medical groups, payers, healthcare systems, and employers to achieve “hybrid healthcare”.

My interest in hybrid healthcare — the nexus of digital health, clinical navigation, and in-person care — began two decades ago at Massachusetts General Hospital where I served as the inaugural Director of the Virtual Practice Project as well as the Director for its Center of Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. My experience led to the creation of Healthcare 360, a technology platform that continues to aid physicians in monitoring and managing large patient populations and which was used to help found CareHive.

Great care at a lower cost requires “around the clock” access to high-quality care, only possible by leveraging technology.

HTA - Who were your early mentors, and how did they impact your career?

Penny Ford-Carleton, a nurse innovator who championed my career, Dr. David Torchiana, CEO of the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization during my time at the organization, and Peter Markell, former CFO of Partners Healthcare all helped influence my career path early on.

HTA - What surprises you about the Healthcare Industry?

The slow rate of change in the healthcare industry is both surprising and disappointing. Even more surprising and disappointing is how difficult it is to implement logical solutions. The complexity of the different problems that the various constituents are solving make the implementation of novel yet sensible innovations challenging which can be exhausting especially for outsiders of the healthcare industry not used to the slow pace of innovation.

HTA - What has been the best advice you’ve been given as an entrepreneur?

Listening is better than speaking. Also, don’t be afraid to be wrong and always learn from your mistakes.

HTA - How do you envision healthcare changing in the next 5-10 years?

There is an explosion of available data and the capacity for data exchange to make healthcare delivery smarter and more personalized. At the same time, healthcare professionals are more aware than ever before of their work balance and meaning at work. So, I see providers offering more personalized care approaches to their patients, and more stratification of provider-level offering patient care.

HTA - How can Austin become known as an epicenter for Health Tech?

It has to do with innovative companies spurring change in the direction that the puck is going. Value-based care, patient access, digital health, data and analytics, and increased patient empowerment are all going to shape healthcare over the next several years. Austin is the home of many companies that are innovating in this area which will drive recognition.

HTA - How can technology help improve clinically meaningful health outcomes from the patient, to the health system, and to the doctor?

Technology can leverage information that can help predict risk. The US system has been historically reactive when it comes to managing or treating illnesses. With advanced data analytics capacity, we can predict risk and be proactive by identifying patients who need care more urgently based on their predicted risk. In this approach, we’ll be able to deliver treatment to the patient before she needs emergent care, saving the system dollars while also getting her in front of the doctor who knows her medical history faster.

HTA - If you were not a medical doctor, what would you be doing?

If I could really start from scratch, I would have studied music.

HTA - What was CareHive’s journey like to get where it is today?

As with most startups, the journey has been very bumpy with plenty of ups and downs. CareHive started off as a mobile urgent care company with fantastic service standards. We are now a data-driven technology company with broad-ranging clinical navigation services. It’s a brand new company with a complete changeover of every leader.

The nice thing about CareHive that bodes well for our success is that many members of the team know each other. I was able to recruit people to the team that I worked with previously, and they have recruited other extremely talented and experienced people. Since we became CareHive, there is a sense of stability and cohesion that we all feel, and makes the journey exhilarating and worth the work.

HTA - As a successful African-American Tech CEO, what’s your advice to other diverse entrepreneurs who aspire to get funding and lead their own startups.

Oddly I don’t consider myself successful yet, but I will say this — do not give up. And expect a ton of no’s and people doubting you. I believe that all entrepreneurs face that challenge and have to work through it. Getting through the doubt makes it easier We know that blacks and women don’t get funded very often, but the only way for that to change is for us to try.

HTA - Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? How has that been relevant to you in your life?

My Jamaican mother said this repeatedly to me as a child, since I was easily frustrated when things didn't turn out the way I desired. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That to me summarized life pretty well, whether it pertains to professional endeavors, relationships, hobbies, dreams. Persistence is the key to overcoming obstacles, doubts, naysayers.

HTA - What are you reading? How do you continue to learn?

I read multiple books at once, right now I am reading;
Think Again: the power of knowing what you don’t know by Adam Grant
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Art of Startup Fundraising by Alejandro Cremades
The Autobiography of Malcolm X- by Malcolm X