Saving Healthcare: How Meroka Is Empowering Doctors To Stay Independent
How Meroka Is Saving Independent Medical Practices, and Why It Matters to All of Us
When we first met Alex Barrett, Cofounder & CEO of Meroka, we knew we were talking to someone on a mission. In a system dominated by private equity and hospital conglomerates, Meroka is carving a third path for independent medical practices, and it’s one we deeply believe in at Interplay.
The traditional path for doctors nearing retirement, or simply needing liquidity, has often meant selling to a larger entity. That transaction brings scale and margin leverage but often comes at the cost of autonomy, culture, and sometimes care quality. Meroka is proving that there's another way.
By pioneering a decentralized employee ownership model, Meroka gives small and mid-sized practices the chance to access scale benefits, like better payer contracts and operational infrastructure, without sacrificing control. Ownership remains with the very people delivering care, from physicians to nurses to front-desk staff.
And here’s the kicker: they don’t trade value for independence. These deals are priced at fair market value, and because Meroka isn’t driven by fund cycles or exit timelines, they’re often better long-term partners than traditional PE acquirers. No forced second exit. No multiple arbitrage pressure.
In the episode, Alex unpacks how reimbursement rate disparities drive consolidation (big practices often get paid 2-3x more for the same procedures), how current models fail to account for physician burnout, and why the employee trust model creates permanence beyond the original founder.
More broadly, we discuss the system-wide misalignments in healthcare, where only ~20 cents of every dollar goes to actual care providers, and how empowering the patient as a true consumer could rebalance the market over time.
We invested in Meroka because we believe they’re not just building a company, they’re restoring a system where care is personal and local.
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