Luke Hejl is the CEO, chairman and co-founder at TimelyMD, the leading virtual health and well-being solution for college and university students. He is an entrepreneur at the intersection of higher education, health care and digital transformation. A champion of finding good people, creating great teams and empowering them to achieve amazing results together, Luke finds company building to be incredibly interesting, challenging, motivating, energizing and fun. In an interview, he speaks on an array of topics. Excerpts:

The inception of TimelyMD

Luke Hejl co-founded TimelyMD in 2017 with Chris Clark and Alan Dennington, M.D., with a vision to help students be well and thrive in all aspects of their lives. “Building upon our team’s previous experience in health care, we identified higher education as an underserved market where students often waited weeks for campus health center appointments,” notes Luke. Seeing increased interest and adoption of virtual care platforms and understanding the reality of a looming national primary care provider shortage helped them to recognize and act on a huge market opportunity for a telehealth company focused exclusively on college students.

As college and university leaders seek solutions that improve student well-being, engagement and retention, they turn to TimelyMD more than anyone else for a best-in-class 24/7 virtual extension of campus health and counseling center resources. With licensed providers in all 50 states, TimelyMD is the only higher ed-specific virtual care company trusted to care for over a million students at more than 200 colleges and universities nationwide.

TimelyCare: A platform for digital natives

“This generation of students is connected to technology more than ever. Whether it’s their phones, laptops or tablets, wherever they go – they’re online. Digital natives need a digital solution for health care that is available on the go, after class and after hours. That’s where TimelyMD can help. Sixty percent of students who sought mental health support through our TimelyCare platform said they would have done nothing if the service were not available.”

Luke adds that since college students are always plugged in, TimelyMD’s on-demand medical and mental health care optimizes campuses’ existing services and gets students care the moment they need it. TimelyCare includes a range of services, including mental health counseling, on-demand emotional support, medical care, psychiatric care, health coaching, basic needs assistance, faculty and staff guidance, and digital self-care content. With services available 24/7, TimelyMD becomes an extension of on-campus health resources and gives students the accessibility they crave.

A virtual health care solution that works

This entrepreneur is grateful for the campus leaders who trust TimelyMD to provide equitable, on-demand care to their students. By increasing convenience, staff capacity, and provider diversity and eliminating barriers such as insurance, co-pays and long wait times, TimelyMD delivers peace of mind as well as positive clinical outcomes. “One of the reasons TimelyMD has experienced such growth is because our proprietary TimelyCare platform allows colleges and universities to implement an unparalleled hybrid model of care in collaboration with on-campus resources, at no cost to students.”

Focused on leadership and relationships

Luke is people-focused, strategic, innovative, creative and compassionate. “At TimelyMD, everything we do is centered around our company’s core values of passionate people, accountability, innovation, growth, quality of service and positive impact. We have proven that a laser-focus on serving students first is key to meeting and exceeding our board’s high expectations for annual recurring revenue, customer retention and quality of service.” As a people-focused CEO, relationships are the connective tissue of his leadership style – as well as TimelyMD’s business. “To build lasting relationships, I embrace and model three key principles: trust, transparency and self-reflection.”

Charting a course for the future

Identifying key metrics for the business and being agile to pivot as needed, based on the ongoing metrics, is a very important factor for Luke. “Following our Series A in 2019, we had planned for 2020 to be a year of significant growth. When the pandemic hit, we were ready with solutions to support students’ health and well-being when colleges and universities were forced to shut down.”

For several months, the company focused all of its attention on developing and marketing a new program that helped schools to quickly bridge the care gap for students, as well as building up the infrastructure to support the influx of students long-term. “Knowing when to pivot and throwing all of our resources at that decision was central to our success today,” he said. “It has been two years since telehealth adoption became a norm in higher education, and the demand has never been greater. While TimelyMD has scaled, our programs have evolved, and our impact has grown, our vision to help students be well and thrive has not changed.”