Today on Health in 2 Point 00, we’re back from our 200th episode celebration! In Episode 201, we have an all-European funding deals episode for you, and I even attempt to answer every story in an accent relevant to the company. First, French insurance company Alan raises €185 million. Scottish company Current Health raises $43 million in a Series B for remote patient monitoring. Thankfully we have an English company in the mix, Proximie raises $38 million, bringing their total to $48 million – they do AR for the OR. Kry, a Swedish telehealth company with 3 million visits, raises $316 million bringing their total to $570M. Finally, German company Caresyntax raises $100 million bringing their total to $177M doing data analytics around surgery. —Matthew Holt
Above the Fold
The Market Forces Behind Vaccine Passports
By SAURABH JHA
Unlike medical meetings, rendering Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony isn’t easy on Zoom, so the local orchestra has been furloughed and their members work for Uber. The opera house wants to reopen, preferably before we reach the elusive herd immunity threshold. They mandate vaccinations for their artists, not least because the performers can keep their masks off. Should they extend this requirement to their patrons?
Vaccine passports, proof of immunity against SARS-CoV-2, to work, dine, fly or watch shows, are controversial. Opponents say they blithely disregard decency, are operationally onerous, and hurt liberty. Worryingly, they create a caste system, which wouldn’t be as concerning if based on just immunology. Such a two-tiered system could sadly mirror societal inequities because it’s the poor who may disproportionately be left unvaccinated. Supporters of vaccine passports further the very structural disadvantages they seek to end.
When arguments are too compelling they likely betray an obvious simplicity. Too often arguments against mandates assume they’d be a government fiat. The opponents recline on the country’s inherently liberal streak conjuring visions of rugged individuals fighting unelected bureaucrats. They say with undisguised pride “this isn’t who we are. We’re the US, not New Zealand. We can’t be controlled.”
This narrative is so tightly embedded in right-of-center discourse that it’s now folklore bordering on an Ayn Rand fairy tale. The narrative is nonsense. The state is too incompetent to either govern adeptly or tyrannize efficiently. Case-in-point: CDC’s easily forgeable paper vaccine certificate. If the state were serious about prying on people’s antibodies, it’d have made the immunosurveillance digital.
The obsession with big government should be antiquated. By censoring content, Facebook and Twitter showed that freedom can more efficiently be curtailed by the private sector. Bottom-up censorship is arguably more powerful than top-down censorship because it has buy-in from a segment of the market. It may very well be the private sector which demands vaccine passports, which begs two questions – why and why not?
Continue reading…The “Health Tech Responds to COVID-19” Showcase Webinar!
By ELIZABETH BROWN
Catalyst @ Health 2.0 is excited to be hosting the Health Tech Responds to COVID-19 Showcase Webinar, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation! A little under a year ago, Catalyst, with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, launched the “Health Tech Responds to COVID-19” platform to maximize the health tech community’s response to the pandemic. The platform features an “Always on” Rapid Response Open Calls (RROCs); a blog/informational website to showcase innovators and experts in this space, and the development of a comprehensive database that allows the public to search and filter for innovative solutions – SourceDB for COVID-19.
With RWJF’s support, Catalyst has opened up the platform to the larger digital health ecosystem and sought organizations interested in sourcing novel technologies, both COVID-19-specific and those with a broader scope. In this video, we hear from some of our Rapid Response Open Call hosts and participants as well as some special guests like John Brownstein discussing VaccineFinder and Jacob Reider talking about the problems of how to manage the vaccine process among the underserved. This is a great discussion of past, present, and future opportunities that have emerged with the global pandemic.
Elizabeth Brown is a Program Manager at Catalyst @ Health 2.0
Sharecare’s SPAC IPO: A Second Success for WebMD Founder Jeff Arnold?
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
Sharecare, the population-health-slash-care-navigator of the stars (literally, celebrity doc Dr. Oz is a co-founder, and Oprah’s Harpo Productions, Sony Pictures Television, and Discovery Communications are partners) is about to hit the public market via a $4-Billion SPAC IPO with Falcon Capital. Jeff Arnold, co-founder, CEO, and Chairman drops in to talk about how he plans to make Sharecare even more successful than the first healthcare business he founded-and-exited, WebMD.
The Sharecare ecosystem is sprawling. The company’s been around for more than a decade, acquired about a dozen digital health point solutions and health tech businesses, and built a population health analytics platform that’s interwoven consumer, employer, provider, and health plan data for years. Now, the business is even getting into providing Health Security verifications for hotels, restaurants, and the like to prove that their facilities meet guidelines for health and hygiene protocols, cleaning standards, physical distancing and other health requirements implemented in the Covid-19 era.
So, how does Jeff anticipate meeting shareholder expectations for growth? The investor deck touts a future of recurring revenue driving sustainable 20% year-over-year growth; Jeff talks through each of Sharecare’s verticals in detail so we can learn how.
Healthcare’s Million Dollar Blocks
By KIM BELLARD
Since I first heard about them, I have been fascinated, and dismayed, by the concept of “million dollar blocks.” For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it doesn’t refer to, say, Beverly Hills, Chicago’s Gold Coast, or Manhattan’s Hudson Yards — areas where the wealthy congregate. No, it refers to city blocks for which society spends over a million dollars annually to incarcerate residents of that block.
I, of course, have to think about the healthcare parallels.
The concept dates back many years, credited to Eric Cadora, now at Justice Mapping, and Laura Kurgan, a professor of architecture at Columbia University, where she is the Director of the Center for Spatial Research (CSR). The power of the concept is to use data visualization to illustrate the problem.
Here, for example, is CSR’s map of Brooklyn for prison spending:
CSR describes the findings as follows:
The maps suggest that the criminal justice system has become the predominant government institution in these communities and that public investment in this system has resulted in significant costs to other elements of our civic infrastructure — education, housing, health, and family. Prisons and jails form the distant exostructure of many American cities today.
Continue reading…Health in 2 Point 00 — The 200th Episode Special!
Believe it or not, Jessica DaMassa and I have been banging out digital health tech & funding news for 200 episodes of this oh-so-cute little show. To celebrate, after several takeover episodes when Jess replaced me with a number of special guests, this time four of the digital health & health care digerati replaced Jess to ask me some oh so serious questions. It’s a special edition with guest appearances from Glen Tullman, Eugene Borukhovic, Lisa Suennen & Ian Morrison, as well as plenty of BS from us two regulars! — Matthew Holt
Please Sign Below: Fraudsters Phishing for Physician Signatures
By HANS DUVEFELT
Almost every day I catch a suspicious fax needing my signature. Often it is an out of state vendor who wants my permission to provide a back brace for a diabetic patient, a continuous blood glucose monitor for a non-diabetic or a compounded (custom made) ointment of some sort that makes no sense from what I know of that patient’s history.
Often, I get a fax appearing to be from Walgreens, just asking me to sign and certify that so-and-so is under my care. Those faxes have Walgreen’s logo, my patient’s correct address and my own DEA and NPI numbers already printed. The problem is that 90% of my patients don’t use Walgreens 20 miles north or south of my clinic, but the local Rexall pharmacy. Once, I called the phone number on the fax and it just rang and rang.
I am convinced that his is just an illicit way to collect physician signatures, so the scammers won’t even have to get my signature on one form at a time. This way it’s like they’ve got their own rubber stamp to use again and again.
I suspect these scams are successful often enough to be quite profitable. I know this because I sometimes sign these forms almost automatically before I catch myself and toss them in the shred box under my desk.
One of the many dirty little secrets in medicine is that doctors get so many papers to sign that there is actually no way we could read them all before scribbling our signature if we still want to see patients, meet clinic revenue projections and match our own productivity quotas.
Continue reading…Inside Cano Health’s SPAC IPO & Tailoring Medicare Advantage Primary Care for the Latino Market
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
Healthcare SPAC-trackers interested in placing bets on value-based primary care for the lucrative Medicare Advantage market will love hearing Cano Health’s CEO Marlow Hernandez dive into the details behind his company’s $4.4B valuation and 7,000% three-year growth rate. Cano Health’s clinics provide “primary care plus” for 100,000 seniors, targeting the particular needs of underserved Latino senior markets in Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Puerto Rico. With $1.4B in revenue, Cano’s business looks similar to publicly-traded Oak Street Health – which boasts a market cap of $14B.
Hoping to replicate what they’ve started in Florida (where Cano Health boasts a long-standing relationship serving Humana’s Medicare Advantage members) the company is building partnerships with major national MA plan providers like UnitedHealthcare, Anthem, Centene and Devoted and scaling up its network of more than 550 primary care physicians. A surprising component of the business plan? Cano Health’s health tech stack! Marlow explains how the care delivery co developed its own practice management software for care navigation, billing, and back-office admin and is already licensing it to more than 1,000 independently owned medical centers.
Tune in for more on the scale-up and scale-out plans for Cano Health before it starts trading at $CANO. The planned merger with Jaws Acquisition Corp (the SPAC led by Barry Sternlicht of Starwood Capital fame) is “imminent.”
THCB Gang Episode 51, Thursday April 22
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.
Crossover Health’s CEO on Next Move: Private? Public? With a Payer??
By JESSICA DaMASSA
What’s the move for Crossover Health? Looking past the virtual-first primary care co’s $168M Series D, CEO Scott Shreeve gets grilled on the long-game. Is their future private? Or public? As “THE” primary care clinic for Amazon employees, rumors have swirled about a potential acquisition for the better part of a year. But now, with the launch of Amazon Care, does Crossover stand a better chance of being acquired – or being axed? Scott’s explanation of a model that uses small, in-person facilities as “confirmatory centers” to compliment virtual care does sound awfully “Amazon-y,” but it also sounds like a very fundable model for public market investors. A Crossover IPO has also been a long-standing rumor as well, perpetuated by the public market filings of OneMedical, Oak Street Health, and, now, VillageMD. A little extra fuel has been added to the fire by big-money raises among still-private competitors Iora Health and Forward. Does the fact that Crossover’s Series D includes a fresh crop of funders – a group of “crossover investors” no less – that back a wider spectrum of startups and industries foreshadow anything? How about the fact that Crossover is launching a product with a PAYER? What does this new offering, that unites payment model and care model into one market-friendly bundle, foretell about the types of clients Crossover is aiming to serve? Pick this interview apart, health tech friends! All guesses are fair game!
