When I invited Dr. Rebecca Mitchell onto The Surgeon’s Record, I knew the conversation would be a good one. A physician, Fulbright scholar, and product leader turned venture capitalist, Rebecca started working at the intersection of clinical care, technology, and innovation long before it was fashionable.
From Validic to Livongo/Teladoc to Homeward, she’s a proven builder in health tech. Today, as co-founder and managing partner of Scrub Capital, Rebecca and her team (including Chrissy Farr and Dr. Jonathan Slotkin) are on a mission to connect clinician-builders with the capital and operational expertise to actually scale what works.
Our conversation ranged from global health to AI, from the hangover of the ZIRP era to the idea that healthcare should be aspirational. The most important take home message was also the most straightforward: physicians can (and must) stay at the center of healthcare innovation.
Below are five take-home points from our wide-ranging conversation.
1. The Post-ZIRP Era Is a Correction, Not a Collapse
The easy money years inflated valuations and expectations across digital health. Services businesses were priced like software, and too many companies promised leverage that never came. Rebecca’s take: the correction was inevitable and necessary.
But there’s also risk of overcorrection. Too many funds have fled healthcare entirely for AI, leaving capital gaps for the kinds of tech-enabled service models that can actually bend the cost curve. Rebecca argues that healthcare isn’t uninvestable, it’s just misunderstood. We need a new asset class comfortable with moderate risk and moderate returns; one interested in building enduring infrastructure rather than the fastest, biggest exit.
2. Clinicians Belong in the Founder’s Seat
Rebecca, along with co-founders Chrissy Farr and Dr. Jonathan Slotkin, built Scrub Capital on the simple premise that the best healthcare companies are built with clinicians, not just for them. Their thousand-member network of physicians doubles as a brain trust for founders who need credible, clinically literate partners.
This creates a deeper, more purposeful network with deep expertise. In fact, clinicians aren’t just “experts on call,” they share in the upside when companies succeed, creating what Rebecca calls a model for missionary, not mercenary engagement.
3. AI Won’t Replace Doctors (But It Will Redefine the Job)
Rebecca put it perfectly: “Humanity will always be part of medicine.” The question isn’t whether AI replaces clinicians, but how it amplifies them. Her vision is that medical expertise — once limited by geography, time, and cost — will soon be accessible anywhere, anytime, synthesized, and contextualized for each person. Rather than diminishing doctors, AI will extend their reach and enhance their practice. Rebecca argues that those building in health tech shouldn’t view AI as a threat. Instead, it’s an invitation to reimagine what being a physician means.
4. Healthcare Has to Be Aspirational Again
This may have been my favorite part of our conversation. Rebecca pointed out that people don’t aspire to be healthy because our healthcare system gives them nothing to aspire to. Wellness and longevity brands have captured the aspirational frame — personal agency, data-driven insight, progress you can see and feel — while traditional healthcare remains reactive, bureaucratic, and disengaging. We shouldn’t dismiss these movements as vanity projects but rather learn from them as opportunities to better engage patients. If we want prevention and early detection to matter, healthcare has to feel like something worth participating in.
5. The Next Generation of Builders Will Be the Bridge
Rebecca believes the most interesting innovation will come from hybrid thinkers —clinicians who understand care delivery and can also think like product leaders, operators, and investors. Those people will be the bridge between the messy realities of the current system and the untapped possibilities of the next one. It’s a hopeful vision — and one that resonates deeply with the work I’m doing at Commons. Like Rebecca, I left the OR because I believe we can build something better: integrated, data-driven, human-centered care that rewards both outcomes and innovation.
My conversation with Rebecca was a reminder that, while cynicism abounds in healthcare, optimism is a powerful mindset. Rebecca embodies the kind of pragmatic idealism the field needs: someone who sees the cracks in the system not as proof of failure, but as the blueprint for rebuilding it.
Thanks for such a great conversation, Rebecca!
Ben Schwartz, MD, MBA
Editor-in-Chief, The Surgeon’s Record
SVP Care Services & Strategy
