Soda Health is cracking open $50M of Series B funding to shake up supplemental benefits.
Medicare Advantage plans deliver $131B/year in benefit funds for transportation, fitness, and grocery programs – yet the impact often falls flat due to an outdated tech infrastructure that makes it difficult for members to take advantage of their benefits.
Soda’s Smart Benefits platform unlocks the full potential of these programs by rebuilding their core infrastructure with a modern payments stack and an expansive retail network:
- Members get a user-friendly way to understand where and how to use their benefits.
- Payors can scale benefit programs supported by Soda’s network of 50k retail locations (including Kroger, Albertsons, CVS) to optimize utilization and lift STAR ratings.
- Retailers get more member traffic to offer health products, food, and pharmacy services.
The secret ingredient is the retail network, which provides the data underpinning Soda’s biggest differentiator: personalized patient engagement.
- Soda’s “first-of-its-kind open loop fintech infrastructure” tracks item-level purchases in real time, allowing it to reward members for using their benefit dollars on products approved to fill gaps in their care.
- By connecting supplemental benefits with insights from retail data, Soda is uniquely positioned to deliver tailored outreach for closing care gaps (by encouraging preventative screenings, improving medication adherence, etc.).
The fresh funds will accelerate Soda’s expansion into new CMS-compliant benefit categories and add some extra fizz to its gap closure strategies, which will reportedly allow it to enter risk-based structures with MA and Medicaid plans.
The Takeaway
Soda isn’t here to build a better supplemental benefits platform, it’s here to rebuild the category from the ground up using a stronger infrastructure of retail partners, patient engagement, and care gap closure. Climbing utilization trends and dwindling capitation rates are pressuring MA plans from multiple fronts, so the time is right for a refreshing approach.
