2026-05-27
Hoskinson Health
- He announces the Hoskinson Health Center in Gillette, Wyoming is shutting down, a family clinic he built with his doctor father and brother.
- The model was never profitable: primary care must see 24-28 patients a day just to break even, and insurance reimbursements often fall below the cost of care.
- After trimming losses from 4 million to 1.7 million a month, with no local or government subsidy and a toxic leak-ridden environment, the appetite was gone.
- He defends the opulent facility and above-market doctor pay as irrelevant, since the structural loss is set by insurers and the federal government.
- He pivots to regenerative medicine under the Stem Cell Freedom Act and frames American healthcare as a national time bomb needing reform.
32 entries
As a diverse entrepreneur spanning synthetic biology, healthcare, and Input Output, he wants to address the Hoskinson Health news, having started as a computer science founder.
The Hoskinsons have been doctors for over 70 years since the 1950s, watching healthcare shift from rural solo practitioners to a bureaucratic healthscape.
In 2021 he asked his retired father and burnt-out brother to build a clinic, drawn to regenerative and network medicine via the interactome and electrome.
Clinics do not make money since only cancer and surgery are profitable, and primary care is a losing proposition for most who are honest about it.
Primary care must see 24 to 28 patients a day just to break even, with profit concentrated in procedures measured by RVUs and in drugs from Pfizer and GSK.
Half of all US Medicare spending goes to the last two years of life, and an insurance model collects under half of what is billed with no price negotiation.
The American healthcare system is broken, with insurers revoking pre-approvals mid-surgery, so they built a center of excellence for Gillette instead.
Filling the clinic with his artwork and collectibles like the Lost in Space B-9 robot, the Forbidden Planet robot, and a vivarium with poison dart frogs.
After optimization the clinic still lost 1.7 million a month, versus the 22,000-patient market's Campbell County Health losing 10 million a year on a 20 million subsidy.
Local decision-makers refused to subsidize the clinic while spending 100 million to attract a nuclear recycling facility to Gillette.
The choices were to run it like a private equity hospital group on mid-levels seeing 20 to 25 patients a day, or shut it down, and his family was leaving medicine.
His passion is stem cells, peptides, exosomes, and the connectome, not fee-for-service care, and that public health like charity only takes and gives nothing back.
A year of optimizations and layoffs damaged morale, with providers told they would see only 10 to 12 patients balking at business demands and warning of burnout.
The environment turned toxic as staff leaked business details, like the leather wall paneling, to Gillette Rants and Raves and Facebook.
The hospital would not credential his doctors for surgery and community physicians refused to refer, sending patients to Elevations or the hospital for lower-resolution imaging.
The model cannot be profitable given insurance and federal reimbursement rates, and with the family leaving and the environment toxic, the appetite was gone.
No one wins as the clinic brought in specialists like neurologists and cardiologists who will leave, forcing patients to drive one to two hours for basic care.
His time is precious for getting Midnight adopted and Cardano back into the top five, and he relied on his father's and brother's expertise, not his own.
Admits they scaled too fast because two thirds of Gillette became patients in five years without marketing, showing a vastly underserved area where they saved lives.
The clinic even built its own construction company after a contractor ran millions over budget, then scaled it back to owner representation after learning that industry's old boys club.
The 60,000 square foot facility was state of the art, and rebuts that opulence caused the failure, since doctors were paid 20 to 40 percent above market to come to Gillette.
He wrote off the CapEx and only needed to break even, but the OpEx made it a charity, an indispensable one for county public health that no one would support.
No comparable clinics are being built anywhere in places like Gillette because conventional wisdom holds these rural markets always lose money.
Medicine's soul has been stripped by a cabal of insurers, pharma, and private equity hospital groups, with nurses suffering 80-hour weeks and leaving within years.
The clinic will continue regenerative medicine with University of Wyoming stem cell extraction IP and hyperbarics, delivered lawfully under the Stem Cell Freedom Act.
Thanks patients and staff, saying to those they saved it was the greatest honor of his career and to those they could not, he is sorry they could not become permanent.
He tried to build Gillette a Mayo Clinic equal to remind small-town people they matter, even bringing in SEAL Team Six leader Dan Carter to try a commercial team.
Takes ultimate accountability, wishing he were a better businessman who could find the secret sauce, but says the time spent and the patients mattered.
The facility will shut down over coming months with a proper transition of care and records, and enough money to pay all bills without bankruptcy.
His parents and brother will stay in Gillette while he takes a muted role, and continues regenerative medicine through a network of providers.
He will publish policy recommendations to reform American healthcare so clinics like this can operate profitably, thanking the people of Gillette.
Praises innovative Wyoming but says healthcare is an American problem, the biggest lurking time bomb that alongside war could bankrupt the country in coming decades.