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Miami Beach startup CourMed brings healthcare services to customers’ homes

Just as Uber revolutionized the way consumers hail car rides, CourMed founder Derrick Miles thinks his company can change the way people access healthcare services in the Miami area.

CourMed, based in Miami Beach, delivers concierge healthcare services to its clients that include in-home medical and vision services, EKG tests, blood draws and lab analysis. Clients can arrange services via an app from licensed healthcare practitioners who get paid immediately as contractors.

“I always had a heart to help others,” Miles, 50, said.

He spent his summers during his undergraduate studies at Bethune Cookman University volunteering at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater and eventually earned a degree in medical technology and later a degree in health administration from University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Miles worked as a hospital administrator for 15 years and noticed that prescription delivery services could better assist patients who needed to receive their medicine in an efficient way. In 2018, CourMed launched as a prescription-delivery service. When the pandemic began in March 2020, his company pivoted to providing COVID-19 testing services and later provided coronavirus antibody delivery services and vaccinations against the virus.

Citing research that ranks Miami as the No. 2 global market for high net worth residents behind Dubai, Miles said this is the perfect market for the medical concierge services that CourMed offers. Many high-income clients can’t go to regular medical visits at a physician’s office because of their work schedules; that’s where concierge services can help.

“Concierge services are in greater demand in Miami than any other city in the United States,” he said. “Operating in the Miami market has allowed us to provide concierge health and wellness experiences for residents in luxury condos, busy corporate executives, athletes and non-athletes who want a competitive edge via regenerative therapies.”

For customers like Dallas resident Chris Moreland, being able to use CourMed, frees up valuable time that he can use for meetings with his team of six people or clients. In the winter of 2020, with COVID-19 vaccines not readily available, Moreland contracted the virus and was relegated to his home. His thoughts were blurry, his head and body hurt and he could not lead his consulting firm.

Weary, he told Miles about his illness and got an unexpected solution.

“His immediate response was, ‘We got the monoclonal antibody drip and can bring it to your house,’” Moreland said. “He said, we can bring it within 24 hours and sent me a link, that’s all it was.”

Within 12 hours, a medical technician was at Moreland’s house to walk him through his medical process and set him up with an intravenous drip in his kitchen. Moreland was promised that he would wake up the next day feeling like a new person and he was immediately back to work the next day.

Miles said that CourMed’s concierge services give consumers a look at the future of healthcare. He predicted concierge health and wellness will become a service line in hospitals and expects Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic or Johns Hopkins to adopt CourMed services.

“Because we have already secured investments from the likes of Microsoft and Google, we have no geographical boundaries,” he said. “There are doctors in Dubai, nurse practitioners in Singapore, phlebotomists in Brazil and dental hygienists in London who can access our CourMed Concierge app and provide concierge health and wellness experiences in homes, offices, condos, luxury hotels or on the go.”

Now, CourMed services are only available for high-income clients. Miles’ next goal is for clients of all financial backgrounds to have access to CourMed services, and he expects that can happen as early as 2024.