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Past the Talking Points: Glen Tullman on Affordable Insulin, Payment Model Reform & Transcarent

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Turns out, that if you’re lucky enough to catch Glen Tullman in an impromptu chat just off the main stage at ViVE 2022, he’s warmed up enough (we could maybe even call it ‘fired up’ enough) to kick it into overdrive, roar past the usual talking points, and tell us what he REALLY thinks about what’s happening in the healthcare market today.

Things are changing. And, if you listen to this chat from start-to-finish, one of the key, overarching themes is payment model reform. From the news about Civica RX’s commitment to $30-dollars-or-less insulin (an initiative Glen helped lead and fund via his family foundation) to the 10X growth of virtual care coming out of the pandemic and the rise of “Big Customer” (aka Walmart and Amazon) in healthcare, the bottom line is that we’re no longer talking about fixing the way care is paid for – it’s actually starting to happen.

What is Transcarent’s role in all this? For those who might still be confused, tune in. This IS confusing, but I think the candor of our situation here may have given rise to one of the best descriptions of the business yet. Glen goes point-by-point on the way Transcarent is attempting to shift the paradigm for cost-and-quality across five (5!!!) different aspects of care at one time, using different strategies, novel technologies, cross-industry partnerships, and never-before-seen relationships with health systems to deliver what “20 years working with payers and 5 years working navigators didn’t deliver” for self-insured employers and their employees.

#HealthTechDeals Episode 15| Clarify, Embedded Healthcare, Wildflower, Vivante Health, Gravie, Nice

We made it back from ViVE in one piece! Will Jess DaMassa stab me in the back Brutus-Style? Tune in to find out as we discuss deals: Clarify buys Embedded Healthcare; Wildflower raises $26 million; Vivante Health raises $16 million; Gravie raises $75 million; and Nice Healthcare raises $30 million.

–Matthew Holt

Transcript

Jess DaMassa:

Well, we made it back from Vive all in one piece and we landed squarely in the Ides of March. Will I stab Matthew Holt in the back Brutus-style? Tune to the March 15th episode of Health Tech DEALS. Oh Matthew Holt, those ruthless Romans, never trust an Italian. That’s the lesson here.

Matthew Holt:

Well, sad enough, I trusted you and you told me to buy some stocks. And now, have you seen digital digital health talks yesterday?

Matthew Holt:

Everybody off another 10%?

Jess DaMassa:

Okay, but how does that compare with the reality of everything else right now?

Matthew Holt:

I don’t know. Somehow, Teladoc was about 300 a year ago

Jess DaMassa:

Don’t even talk to me about Teladoc.

Matthew Holt:

Now it’s around 50.

Continue reading…

Quickbite Interviews: Lark & Luma Health

I was at the VIVE conference in Miami last week and caught up with a number of CEOs & execs for some quickbite interviews — around 5 mins getting (I hope) to the gist of what they & their companies are up to. I am going to dribble them out this week.

First two up are Julia Hu, CEO of Lark, a conversational AI program for chronic & behavioral health that works primarily with health plans, and Adnan Iqbal, CEO of Luma Health, a patient messaging system mostly used by providers. — Matthew Holt

#HealthTechDeals Episode 14: Elemy, Health Gorilla, M_disrupt; Flume; and Homeward Health

In this episode of Health Tech Deals, Jess and I say hello to you from Miami! Together at ViVE 2022, we weigh in on some big funding deals! We also have a short cameo along the way (watch to see who it is)! Elemy raises $215 million; Health Gorilla raises $50 million; M_disrupt raises $6 million; Flume raises $30 million; and Homeward Health raises $20 million.

TRANSCRIPT

Jessica DaMassa:

Hello from Miami. I am at ViVE and look, the exhibit hall coming down around me. Here’s what the reg area looked like. People are leaving, everybody’s got their bags and ah, look who I’ve got. Weighing in with the big funding deals from ViVE, Matthew Holt. It is the March 10th episode of Health Tech Deals. Well, we’re selfie-style here, because we are on the move.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah. You had a fantastic professional cameraman and we decided not to use him

Jessica DaMassa:

No. Instead we’re using this, but I’ve interviews for you guys coming out of this.

Matthew Holt:

Even I did some, actually a lot of stuff going on in the show, pretty interesting. And there were a few deals announced.

Continue reading…

Will ‘DoorDash for Lab Draws’ Startup Sprinter Health Be What Speeds Up Virtual Care’s Growth?

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Sprinter Health bills itself as “the “DoorDash for lab draws” – sending nurses and phlebotomists out to patients’ homes to collect blood samples and urine samples, check vitals, and even perform Covid tests. Their model has been received with some skepticism (most notably by my Health Tech Deals co-host and legendary health care curmudgeon Matthew Holt) so we get down to the bottom of what’s REALLY going on with CEO Max Cohen.

The long-term play is NOT to just rove the streets like some nomadic Quest Diagnostics; it’s to support the emerging market of virtual care and telehealth-based next-gen healthcare companies that will, ultimately, be limited in their abilities to diagnose-and-treat unless they can easily – and inexpensively – get patients lab tests.

Sprinter hopes to be that logistics company, extending the ‘value of virtual’ so it can live up to its promise of providing less expensive, more convenient care to patients. Max says only 15-20% of their business is made up of consumer-directed concierge calls; instead, the focus is on having a provider – think home health providers, specialty labs, virtual-first primary care clinics – dispatch Sprinter instead. Their pricing is built to attract these kinds of providers, giving Sprinter an advantage over, say the kind of medical transport services that are typically engaged to bring home health patients to the lab instead of the other way around.

Less than one-year old, Sprinter has already raised more than $37 million and counts health-tech-famous funds like Andreesen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Accel, Google Ventures – and even the real DoorDash’s co-founder and CEO Tony Xu – as investors. So, what’s ahead in the short-term to expand services out of LA, San Francisco, and Sacramento? We talk geographic expansion (hello, Texas and Georgia) and how Max is planning to continue to expand the utility and value of virtual care without increasing cost.

When Crypto Comes to Health Care

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By KIM BELLARD

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia has been called many things.  To most of the world, of course, it’s considered an invasion, a war between the two countries.  To Russia, it’s a “peacekeeping” mission.  The description that I can’t get out of my head, though, is one that I believe The Washington Post first used:  it’s the world’s first crypto war.  

“There is something about the war in Ukraine that feels different,” a former U.S. intelligence official told Nick Bilton. “We’ve seen wars documented on Twitter and images shared on the internet before, but this time it isn’t just bombs and bullets; this war is digital from the top to the bottom.” And, Mr. Bilton says: “At the center are cryptocurrencies.”  

If crypto has come to war, can healthcare be far behind?

Continue reading…

Mental Health Care & Medicaid State-of-Play: Circulo Health, Brave Health Execs Weigh-In

By JESS DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Two experts in mental health care for the Medicaid market stop by to help us get smart on the challenges facing patients and providers alike in this critical area of care. It’s not just the payment model that is different; stigma is different, patients are more racially and culturally diverse than those in commercial plans, support systems vary, and even the normalization of seeking mental health care manifests itself differently when it’s individually-driven as opposed to part of an “employer group.”

Anna Lindow, CEO of digital-first mental health startup Brave Health, and Vik Bakhru, Chief Health Officer of new managed Medicaid plan Circulo (the one built on Olive’s health tech platform) share what they know about this patient population, including what they are learning via the partnership they share to provide Brave Health’s services to Circulo’s members in Columbus, Ohio and Albany, New York.

The top of this conversation starts with the trend-talk and identification of the key issues facing Medicaid mental health care, then we get into some updates from Brave and Circulo, including how Circulo is examining “what it means to be a payer of care” and looking to innovate just one-year after launch.

BREAKING at ViVE: Jenny Schneider on Launch of New Biz, Homeward

by JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

BREAKING! Livongo-famous Jenny Schneider stops by to talk to us first, on-site at ViVE in Miami, about the brand-new business she’s just launched today to “rearchitect” rural health and care. Called Homeward, the startup is coming out with a $20 million Series A backed by General Catalyst, and a novel model that will integrate virtual-and-in-person primary care and cardiology care for Medicare beneficiaries in rural markets. We get into the business model, care model, some shocking statistics about just how dire the market need is, AND all the gossip about the old friends she’s bringing into the business with her. PLUS: Bonus dishing on Glen Tullman’s new business Transcarent, and what connection Homeward might have to the SPAC that Jenny co-founded with Glen, Hemant Teneja and Steve Klasko of General Catalyst. Coming at you fast with this one!

Reflections From the Ukraine

By MIKE MAGEE

The English translator of Tolstoy’s epic Russian novel, “War and Peace”, Richard Pevear, writes in his introduction, “The book is set in the period of the Napoleonic wars (1805-1812) and tells the interweaving historical events of two very different families of the Russian nobility – the severe Bolonskys and the easygoing Rostovs – and of a singular man reminiscent of the author himself – Count Pierre Bezukhov. It embodies the national myth of ‘Russia’s glorious period’ as Tolstoy himself called it…”

On page 348, in a moment of intense introspection, the very same Pierre broodingly reflects, “What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is life and what is death? What power rules over everything?”

Pierre’s mind provides this very dark response, “You will die – and everything will end. You will die and learn everything – or stop asking.”

Continue reading…

Matthew’s health care tidbits: The Stupidity Vaccine

Each week I’ve been adding a brief tidbits section to the THCB Reader, our weekly newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB that week (Sign up here!). Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt

For my health care tidbits this week, I think we need a new vaccine. We need one that prevents stupidity.

Look I get that some people don’t think the flu vaccine is effective and don’t think the effects are too bad, so they don’t get one every year. Many people don’t get a vaccine for shingles. But as someone who had shingles long before the recommended age for the vaccine, let me tell you, you’ll wish you had the vaccine should you get it. And even sensible liberal Maggie Mahar a long while back was pretty suspicious of Merck’s Gardasil vaccine for cervical cancer–although since then it’s been replaced both by a more effective updated version and by Cervarix and the long term results are really good.

But since COVID-19 appeared the cultural and ideological identification among most Republicans has been that only wussy liberals take the COVID vaccine. This is stupid and indefensible. Even Donald Trump thinks so! But when he told his cult members that, they booed him! And so the US is stuck on not enough people vaccinated to repel variants or stop ICUs filling up. There are now hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths among the unvaccinated with no end in sight.

But this isn’t stupid enough. Now we are seeing senior political leaders attacking vaccines for diseases we’ve had under control for ages. We’ve already seen outbreaks of measles in recent years, including one at Disneyland. Last month 17 Georgia state senators proposed banning school mandates for all vaccines including MMR, chickenpox, DtAP, Hep B, Polio and more. It’s amazing that these people don’t believe in science, yet they are probably happy to use a smartphone or get in an airplane.

Sadly there appears to be no vaccine for stupidity on the horizon

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