Helping Non- English Speaking Latinos Access Quality Healthcare

Ulupreneur Bismarck Lepe grew up with a unique understanding of how difficult it is for Spanish speakers to access the healthcare system here. His parents were migrant farmworkers, and the family lived on both sides of the border, depending on the season. When the family was in the United States, they didn’t have access to healthcare.

After graduating from Stanford, Bismarck worked at Google in the early days and went on to help found five startups—Wizeline, Ooyala, StartupGDL, Cerby and currently is co-founder of MiSalud, an Ulu Fund III company. MiSalud is a virtual care platform that helps Spanish speakers communicate their needs with healthcare providers.

We caught up with the serial entrepreneur recently, and Bismarck shared with us his views on healthcare for Latinos in North America and how MiSalud can help companies improve the health and wellbeing of their employees.

How can MiSalud improve healthcare for non-English speaking Latinos?

Miscommunication and cultural differences often contribute to poor health outcomes for Latino patients. MiSalud provides culturally attuned healthcare—both mental health services and physical health services—to Spanish speaking patients in the US by providing same-day access to experienced Latino medical practitioners. We have physicians in Mexico who act as health coaches to provide Spanish language consults. And we have physicians in the US who can provide help with prescriptions, labs, etc.

You have raised tens of millions of dollars in your career and even up to $100M for one of your startups. What is your best advice to fundraising founders?

My tips for founders around fundraising is— you’re always doing it. You should start early. You should build a network, and you should also find investors and investment partners who have a similar thesis to the problem set or the industry that you’re in.

How important do you think it is to hire diverse teams?

Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity and experience are not. And if you have a philosophy of having a diverse team and you also have a culture of helping that diverse team,  then you get to tap into talent that other companies may overlook— and as a result, you may end up with talent that has incredible potential that another company wouldn’t have.

How has your experience been working with Ulu?

For a very long time, as an entrepreneur, my view on investors was that they were just money. But working with Ulu, they’ve been an incredible partner. They’re helping us look at the business, helping us hire, helping us to assess our overall operating plan, and evaluating tweaks that we should be making to make sure that we’re a more efficient business that can scale.

What are your dreams for MiSalud?

We have a $4 trillion healthcare system, and the majority of people who use it are unhappy with it.  I believe that with MiSalud, we’re at the beginning of the integration of a healthcare system across all of North America. The reality is physicians in Mexico make a tenth of what they make in the US, so you’re able to significantly bring down the overall cost of medicine. One could see that with an aging population in the US, instead of having retirement homes in the US, you could have retirement homes in Mexico. And I believe that with MiSalud, we can be the tip of the spear.

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Rusty Dornin
Rusty Dornin is the director of marketing and communications for Ulu Ventures. An award-winning radio and television journalist, she was a CNN correspondent for nearly 18 years covering domestic and world news ranging from war to natural disasters and tales of crime and politics.
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