Dr. Bill Kapp wants to change America’s health care model by shifting it from treating symptoms to diagnosing diseases before those symptoms appear. 

Fountain Life, 1000 Immokalee Road in North Naples, gives Kapp a working laboratory to try and do just that. Inside lies millions of dollars in diagnostics equipment, including an MRI machine and a CT scan. 

A full workup of diagnostics work takes the better part of a day and costs $11,000, Kapp said. Within five years, if his marketing efforts succeed in taking this approach mainstream, he said those costs, through economies of scale, will fall to $500.  

Kapp is working on a partnership with a major hotel chain to be announced later this year, and he is hoping to partner with area employers and communities on adopting the model. 

“The point is to ultimately democratize this,” said Kapp, a former orthopedic surgeon and hospital developer. “And to get this out to everybody. 

“All along, while I was trying to lower health care costs with good outcomes, it became very clear to me that we needed a new approach to health care.” 

Inside Fountain Life, that new approach appears. The lobby has a big-screen TV playing a video of beach scenes with informational graphics. The interior of the facility has a circular hallway lined with private examination rooms and screening rooms. 

“We actually put people through these advanced testing processes,” Kapp said. “Full body MRI, advanced cardiac screening, we do full genome sequencing. We look at all the bacteria in your gut. 

“We can then show you a pathway to detect diseases early so you can reverse it with treatment and then optimize your health.” 

Modern health care has improved with new technologies, he said, but it has yet to put those technologies to full use. 

“Because while we’re making things better in terms of possible outcomes at the hospital, getting you a better knee replacement, a better hip replacement, we can put a stent in your heart,” Kapp said. “But wouldn’t it be better to solve the problems from happening before they even began?” 

Fountain Life has quotes of ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who inspired the first principles approach to solving problems, a philosophy to which Kapp adheres. 

“You take the information available and the problem you’re trying to solve, and you boil it down to a base level of information and the procedures you need to get the job done,” he said. 

The current approach to health care, Kapp said, has grown antiquated and too expensive. He said he realized the irony in how expensive his business model is today, which is why he’s working on lowering costs. 

He compared the current health care model to aviation—looking for external signs on an airplane that may miss internal problems. Walking around an airplane and checking the tires, Kapp said, misses any problems with the plane’s engine. 

“You go to the doctor,” Kapp said. “He does a walkaround. Standing there in a paper gown. Then he pulls out a 200-year-old instrument called a stethoscope. And he can’t hear the plaque in your arteries. He can’t hear that Stage I pancreatic cancer. He can’t do that because he doesn’t have the right tools. 

“What we want to do is give doctors better tools to detect disease early and also pay doctors to keep you healthy.”