From Surgeon to Startups: The Journey of Richard Stahl in Venture Capital & Healthcare Innovation

Rick started his career as a surgeon, certified in both General Surgery and Plastic Surgery. After initially practicing and teaching for nearly a decade on the Yale School of Medicine faculty, where he ultimately became Clinical Professor, he decided it was time to learn about business—before it was common for physicians to do so. While performing surgery during the day and studying business and attending business school classes at night, he started his private practice.  Upon completing his business degree, he undertook a twenty year progression of executive positions at the Yale New Haven Medical Center. He was initially associate chief for that major academic center hospital’s Department of Surgery, next was appointed Associate Chief Medical Officer, and then was put in charge of all of the hospital’s operating rooms (OR) for several years. He led the OR’s 425 employees and oversaw all OR functions, including daily operations, the capital budget, evaluation, selection, acquisition, and implementation of all OR technologies and IT systems, purchasing, facilities, all professional and support staff, 30 operating rooms and tens of thousands of operations annually in both inpatient and outpatient settings. His next role was as the inaugural vice president of the hospital’s ambulatory services division, with P&L responsibility for 30 of the health system’s nonprofit and subsidiary for profit outpatient facilities in seven towns in Connecticut. These facilities’ staff members numbered more than 500, and their functions included primary care, women’s and specialty clinics, surgery, GI endoscopy, radiology, and radiation therapy centers, and community health. Ten years ago, Rick left the Yale Medical Center to help a new type of “startup”, the founding of a new medical school, Quinnipiac University’s Frank Netter MD School of Medicine, as its Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Relationships.  He now serves as the school’s Special Advisor and Emeritus Professor.  During this time, he also served as Instructor in the Policy and Management track at the Yale School of Public Health. 

Rick’s experience advising Health Care Entrepreneurs

One of Rick’s interests in health care and biotech is to follow developments in both health care policy and technology and the ways in which the former drives the latter.  In one example, government policy has played a fundamental role by testing and supporting a new trend of hospital service delivery at home. A goal of this national initiative is to demonstrate the cost profile of this innovative service and to monitor the measures of care, the benefits and risks and what the reimbursement should be. The intent is to improve hospital access and capacity, patient comfort, convenience—and, hopefully, the cost—of treating individuals needing less intense care of acute illnesses.  In this model, the healthcare team remotely monitors and also physically checks patients once or twice a day, using equipment and supplies placed on loan at the patient’s home. This is an expected win-win situation, with patients remaining at home in a more comfortable and healthy environment, yet providing needed care, with less exposure to hospital acquired infections, in a comparable, maybe ultimately lower cost environment, all while freeing up capacity and beds at the hospital for those suffering more serious conditions.

Changes in health care reimbursement policy such as this can provide entrepreneurs with opportunities to develop and drive new technologies, digital health innovations or devices, and services or bring to market new models of care delivery that can both capitalize on the new reimbursement potential and improve quality and satisfaction. Digital health startups have tapped opportunities such as this.  Policy changes such as these, which emerge periodically, and the opportunities driven by new policies are areas in which Rick enjoys advising.  

Rick also advises or even redirects entrepreneurs regarding their potential markets and beachheads, or therapeutic targets and indications.  In some cases, he helps an entrepreneur who’s expert in one narrow field think more broadly regarding the possibilities for an innovation.  Entrepreneurs sometimes don’t realize that their therapeutic, product, or service may have more utility or wider impact than they previously thought.  He finds it particularly rewarding to identify the potential added value or more successful path to market than had previously been considered.

Richard Stahl has been active for ~20 years in the venture capital / startup community as a VC limited partner, venture partner, angel investor, and mentor to founders in the Yale community and beyond.  His involvement in venture funds includes nine years’ service as a venture partner in a New Haven-based fund whose lead investor is Yale University and limited partnerships in three venture funds, all of which were led by Yale investments, as well.