Category: Health Tech

THCB Gang Episode 51, Thursday April 22

Apr 22, 2021

Episode 51 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, Jan 21. You can see it below! Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) was joined by regulars: futurists Ian Morrison (@seccurve) & Jeff Goldsmith; privacy expert and now entrepreneur Deven McGraw @HealthPrivacy; and digital health guru Fard Johnmar (@fardj). We really dug into vaccines, vaccine passports and what they means for the future of health and society. Great conversation, benefitting a lot from having a fabulous lawyer on the show!

If you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved from Friday as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

Let’s Build Some LTC Infrastructure!

Apr 20, 2021

By KIM BELLARD

Quick now: what’s the biggest single component of President Biden’s infrastructure plan (a.k.a The American Jobs Plan)? Fixing roads and bridges? Upgrading the power grid? Preparing the nation for electric vehicles? Giving all Americans access to broadband? Wrong. If you guessed home and community services, you’ve been paying attention.

President Biden is proposing $400b (out of some $2 trillion total spending) for this component, compared to, for example, $115b for roads and bridges or $174b to support electric vehicles. He wants to improve the pay of home care workers, fund more of those jobs, and ensure more people have access to home and community services.

All laudable goals, but not nearly enough, and not spent on the right things. I worry that we may miss a generational opportunity to fundamentally rethink the infrastructure for long-term care.

Opponents of the Biden plan argue that this part of the program is not “infrastructure” in any normal use of the word, and cynics believe it is more about satisfying the SEIU. On the other hand, long-term care advocates worry that it doesn’t do anything to improve nursing homes, nor the existing long-term care financing mechanisms.

No one is happy with our long-term care system, except maybe the people profiting from it. We spend well over $300b annually on long-term care services, plus billons more in unpaid care, but that doesn’t seem to be money well spent. Long-term care makes the rest of our messed-up healthcare system look futuristic. Since 70% of us are likely to require some kind of long-term care assistance during our lifetime, this is an issue we should all care about.

THCB Gang Episode 50, Thursday April 15

Apr 15, 2021

Well the half-century is up for #THCBGang and it’s been a lot of fun bantering with some of the cognoscenti of health tech, business & policy over most of the last year.

For #50 we had a special guest. Robert Pearl, (@RobertPearlMD) former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group, noted commentator, and author. He joined me, along with regular gang members policy expert consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1), policy & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), and Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune).

There was a little discussion of Robert’s new book Uncaring (although there’ll be more about that on THCB later) and a lot of discussion about his experience at Kaiser Permanente, what went right, what went wrong and why it never traveled nationwide–and what that all means for a new generation of medical groups. And we didn’t forget the vaccine rollout, and even whether it was safe to be on a plane!

You can see the video below live and the audio will be on our podcast channel (Apple/Spotify) from Friday — Matthew Holt

To Add is Expected, To Subtract is Design

Apr 13, 2021• 1

By KIM BELLARD

A couple years ago I wrote about how healthcare should take customer experience guru Dan Gingiss’s advice: do simple better. Now new research illustrates why this is so hard: when it comes to trying to make improvements, people would rather add than subtract.

That, in a nutshell, may help explain why our healthcare system is such a mess.

The research, from University of Virginia researchers, made the cover of last week’s Nature, under the catchy title Less Is More. Subjects were given several opportunities to suggest changes to something, such as a Lego set-up, a geometric design, an essay or even a travel itinerary. The authors found: “Here we show that people systematically default to searching for additive transformations, and consequently overlook subtractive transformations.”

In the Lego picture here, for example, when asked how to strengthen the upper platform, most people wanted to add new columns, instead of simply removing the existing column. The researchers note: “The subtractive solution is more efficient, but you only notice it if you don’t jump to an additive conclusion.”

Giving cognitive nudges – like explicitly mentioning the option of deleting something – improved the likelihood that people would come up with subtractive options, but increasing cognitive load (through additional tasks) decreased it. Co-author Benjamin Converse said:

Our Healthcare System Needs More Than Policy Overhaul: It’s Time for Private Sector Innovation to Kick into High Gear for Our Health’s Sake

Apr 12, 2021

By SACH JAIN

Last year I was heading to a meeting on a Fortune 500 business campus and stumbled upon a bake sale. It was odd to see someone selling cupcakes and breads on the grounds of a major corporation, so I inquired. As it turns out, Judy, an employee, was selling baked goods to finance her insurance deductible for spinal fusion surgery.

“Is this what our system has come to?” I asked myself, “Fundraisers for fusions?” If so, our health system is broken.

No matter how you slice it, Americans spend more on healthcare than any other advanced economy, with households responsible for 28% of that spend according to CMS. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) attempted to address long-standing deficiencies inherent in our fractured healthcare system. However, creating an insurance marketplace hasn’t solved the problem of affordability or the reality of limited access to quality providers. The concept is great, but without private sector buy-in it will never succeed.

President Biden is taking long-overdue steps to address some of the ACA’s shortcomings with Executive Orders. During his campaign, he suggested other actions, like capping marketplace premiums at 8.5% for all income levels with the goal of spurring enrollment and strengthening the ACA with an affordable public option. The recently passed $1.9 trillion stimulus package also incorporates an increase in government subsidies to health insurers for covering workers laid off due to COVID-19 and those purchasing their own coverage.

This is a start. But it’s not enough. We can’t afford to waste time waiting for policymakers to negotiate rules that may be overturned when a party majority flips.

Some Discord Could Be Good for Health Care

Apr 6, 2021

By KIM BELLARD

By the time you read this, Microsoft may have already struck a deal with the messaging service Discord. VentureBeat reported two weeks ago that Discord was in an “exclusive acquisition discussion” with an interested party, for a deal that could reach at least $10b. Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal each quickly revealed that the interested party was Microsoft (and also confirmed the likely price).

Me, I’m wishing that a healthcare company – hey, TelaDoc and UnitedHealth Group, I’m looking at you! – was in the mix.

Let’s back up. If you are not a gamer, you may not know about Discord. It was launched in 2015, primarily as a community for gamers. Originally it focused on texting/chat, but has widened its capabilities to include audio and video. The Verge described it: “Discord is a great mix of Slack messaging and Zoom video, combined together with a unique ability to just drop into audio calls freely.”

Zoom meets Slack meets Clubhouse.

As you might infer from the potential asking price, Discord has done quite well. It has over 140 million monthly users, and, despite having no advertising and offering a free service, generated $130 million in revenues last year (through its “enhanced Discord experience” subscription service Nitro). OK, it still isn’t profitable, but a December funding round gave it a $7b valuation.

The Medicaid Plan of the Future: Sean Lane on Building Circulo on Top of Olive’s AI Platform

Apr 1, 2021• 1

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

What’s better than being the CEO of one blazing-hot disruptive health tech company that’s raised $450M to build “the internet of healthcare”? How about becoming the CEO of a second company – a new managed Medicaid health plan company – that’s to be built on top of your first company’s machine learning platform, which is chock-full of hospital data and learning how to automate healthcare admin expertise? So is the fate of Sean Lane, CEO of Olive and now, also CEO of Circulo.

What does a built-from-scratch, tech-first Medicaid plan look like? Sean talks through the strategy behind the new health insurance co, which is aiming to use Olive’s tech to automate every aspect of the way a payer functions in effort to 1) strip away health plan admin costs and 2) create a never-before-seen relationship between patient, payer, and provider. On this latter point, it’s the fresh approach to payer-provider relations that seems to really have Sean excited. With Olive already built into hundreds of health systems, and conveniently located on the desktops of those providers, Sean says Circulo will be poised to take advantage of that network’s data and distribution to forever alter the healthcare payment model. Submitting claims goes away. Denials go away. Costs drop. Care improves.

Backed by a fresh $50M from Olive’s investors (Drive Capital and General Catalyst led Circulo’s Series A with participation from Oak HC/FT and SVB Capital) the new plan is currently building team and tech and aiming “to cover one life, bring on one provider, and earn one dollar of revenue by the end of the year.” It’s early days, but we dive into the details behind the strategy and also explore how this fits into the “health assurance thesis” that’s lurking behind General Catalyst’s latest investments, particularly those spearheaded by Hemant Taneja, who literally co-wrote the book on the subject with Jefferson Health’s Steve Klasko, and is the CEO of the Health Assurance Acquisition Corporation ($HAACU) SPAC that’s just out there waiting to take a health tech business public.

THCB Gang Episode 49, Thursday April 1, 1pm PT /4pm ET

Apr 1, 2021

The April Fools joining me on THCB Gang today will be policy expert consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1), futurist Jeff Goldsmith, policy & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), and patient safety expert & all around wit Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson). There’s vaccines, a 4th wave, Texas reopening, Florida never having closed, and a whole mess of health policy. It’ll be fun — so come join us

You can see the video below live and the audio will be on our podcast channel (Apple/Spotify) from Friday

Digital Therapeutics, Megan & Me!

Mar 31, 2021

Anyone who follows me knows that I’ve been questioning whether digital therapeutics are real and more importantly whether the people building and trying to sell them are simply trying to replicate the American drug pricing model–patent, protect, prescribe & price gouge. So who better to have this conversation with than the person in charge of explaining and selling the notion of digital therapeutics to the world? Megan Coder is Executive Director of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance. She graciously and bravely agreed to talk to me. Who won the argument? You’ll have to watch to decide, but I found our discussion to be a lot of fun and very interesting and I hope you will too – Matthew Holt

The transcript is below

Matthew Holt:

Hi, it’s Matthew Holt with a THCB spotlight. I’m here with Megan Coder. Megan is the executive director of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance. And we’re here to talk about this thing called digital therapeutics, as to what they are, what the alliance does and whether they really exist and how we should treat them. Megan, thanks for coming on. I know we’ve done a little bit of sparring online and in-person, but I’ve never interviewed you. So I’m looking forward to this. So how are you doing?

Megan Coder:

Good. It’s more fun to spar in-person, but I miss the in-person aspect.

Meet Rightway: The Little-Known $1.1B Care Navigator PBM Startup That Just Scored $100M

Mar 30, 2021

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Despite nearly 900 employer clients (including big brands like Burger King, Kroger, and DoorDash), a net promoter score of 84, and a new pharmacy benefits management (PBM) program launched mid-pandemic, healthcare navigator startup, Rightway, seems to have come out of left field with its $100M Series C fundraise and $1.1B valuation. CEO Jordan Feldman introduces us to the company he’s built and its pretty impressive ability to achieve double-digit decreases in the cost of healthcare for mid- and large self-insured employers.

We walk through the business model, talk about the well-funded competition in both the care navigation and PBM spaces, and get acquainted with Rightway’s plans for scaling up and attracting new clients. An added little point of intrigue? As Rightway looks to gain a foothold working with health plans, Jordan mentions some interesting ties via its Series C investors. While the round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation by Tiger Global and existing investors, it’s Thrive Capital, also an investor in the health insurance startup Oscar Health, that sounds like it might help Rightway make its way into the payer market.