Threshold Ventures Founder Emily Melton

Digital Health

Health System Partnership Playbook

Andreessen Horowitz partner Julie Yoo and Bassett Healthcare CDO Paul Uhrig recently gave Healthcare Dive their playbook for entrepreneurs looking to partner with health systems, which included plenty of insider tips to stand out in a crowded field.

Getting in the (right) door is the first step to any pitch, but an academic medical center with a healthy mix of payor contracts will have a different lens than a rural hospital serving mostly Medicaid patients.

• Advice: Research target health systems and make sure they align with your product’s value proposition. Make sure you’re reaching the right person, which usually involves multiple stakeholders across clinical, operational, and financial leadership. The value proposition needs to hold up to each.

Making the pitch will vary by health system (an asterisk that could probably be added to every tip), so it’s important to tailor all information and supporting data to individual priorities. This section stresses that it’s “imperative” to illustrate a positive financial impact. 

• Advice: Don’t be afraid to ask about budget and clarify your revenue model. Even if stakeholders like the solution, it’s moot if they aren’t able to find the funds for it. 

The evaluation process can run the gamut from informal discussion to formalized diligence, but health systems aren’t usually opposed to giving visibility into the evaluation checklist.

• Advice: Upfront qualification work is intended to de-risk the implementation process and identify potential blockers early. Be prepared with case studies and references from other customers to support the evaluation process.

Pilot programs are a health system favorite, but clearly defined success criteria and a commitment to move forward if those are met are two key ways to avoid “death by pilots.” 

• Advice: Try not to get hung up on IT integration, and if possible steer toward an implementation scope that requires minimal integration before phasing into a full-blown integration to ramp up to your product’s full value.

The Takeaway

As Yoo and Uhrig describe it, partnering with providers is a bit like “making an emulsion from oil and water,” especially at a time when many of them are grappling with rising labor costs and slim margins. Health systems see a daily flurry of startups offering to solve these problems, and if this playbook makes one thing crystal clear, it’s that the only way to get a pitch to land is to make it hit squarely in the center of their individual needs.

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The Wire

• Main Street Health Lands $315M: This year’s HLTH funding announcements are starting with a bang following Main Street Health’s massive $315M raise to expand value-based care across rural America. Main Street partners with rural primary care clinics by placing a Health Navigator at each one to coordinate tasks like scheduling screenings, medication reminders, and post-discharge follow-ups. The boots-on-the-ground support is currently reaching 900 clinics across 18 states, with Main Street’s average partner clinic consisting of just 2.5 providers and serving a town of less than 5,000 people.

• Declining US Life Expectancy: The Washington Post put out an amazing article on why US life expectancy has been undergoing a swift decline since 2014. Although firearms and opioids play a role, chronic conditions account for twice the loss of life as all homicides, suicides, overdoses, and car accidents combined. The piece explores a long list of reasons behind the trend, concluding that social factors are the true “causes of the causes,” as seen in the fact that the life expectancy gap between the wealthy and poor has grown 15 times faster than the income gap since 1980.

• Brightside Expansion: Brightside Health is expanding its telemental health services to 50M new patients through a series of new Medicaid and Medicare partnerships, nearly doubling its total covered lives to over 100M. The lengthy partnership roster includes Centene, Optum (to serve UnitedHealthcare MA members), Lucet (to serve Florida Blue members), and BCBS of Texas, with each now offering Brightside’s full suite of virtual services (psychiatry, therapy, Crisis Care).

• CirrusMD Unveils Physician-First Model: CirrusMD unveiled its Physician-first Care & Guidance model that streamlines care journeys by building around the physician, allowing them to overcome traditional limitations of one-to-one encounters through collaborative virtual environments. This industry report does a great job unpacking the new model, but the three core pillars are: the tenets of Advanced Primary Care, concurrent care delivered through a multidisciplinary staffing model / clinical team, and an integrated platform to support physicians.

• Excess Healthcare Cost Analysis: The Commonwealth Fund looked into why US healthcare costs are nearly twice as high per person as other peer nations, and produced a nice breakdown of the leading contributors. Administrative costs were an easy target, with the report specifically calling out processes related to eligibility, coding, and submission. The top factors ranked by their share of excess costs include: health plan administrative costs (15%), provider administrative costs (15%), prescription drugs (10%), and physician wages (10%).

• Headway Closes $125M: Mental health platform Headway joined the unicorn club after closing $125M of Series C funding (total raised now $225M) to connect patients to in-network therapists while helping mental health providers reduce the administrative burden of working with payors. The Headway platform lets users enter their health plan info to find covered therapists, while also helping those same providers offload backend operations such as credentialing, billing, and keeping up with compliance requirements.

• Welldoc Weight Management: Welldoc is adding weight management to its chronic condition management platform, joining existing offerings for diabetes, hypertension, and mental wellbeing. The platform works with health plans, health systems, and employers to provide personalized digital coaching while connecting people to their health data to show progress toward their goals. Unlike other companies entering the obesity care space with a sharp focus on GLP-1s, Welldoc is positioning its service as a “holistic” approach to weight management.

• ChatGPT Reports for Patients: In European Radiology, German researchers investigated ChatGPT’s ability to make patient-friendly radiology reports by asking it to produce three fictitious reports that could be understood by a child. Fifteen radiologists rated the reports’ quality, finding them to be factually accurate and complete, and not potentially harmful to patients. Some incorrect statements were found, yet another indication that ChatGPT-generated content is still in need of oversight.

• KeyCare + Remission Medical: KeyCare and Remission Medical are teaming up to improve access to virtual rheumatology care for the 24% of US adults battling some form of arthritis. Health systems using KeyCare’s Epic-based care platform can now connect directly to Remission Medical’s virtual rheumatology teams for triage, diagnostic testing, and treatment initiation, as well as longitudinal symptom management and behavioral healthcare if needed.

• High Profile Recoveries: Athlete sudden cardiac arrest was a mainstream news story once again last week, although this time coverage focused on recoveries. Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin took the field for the first time, almost nine months after he suffered cardiac arrest in a playoff game. Meanwhile, LeBron James shared that his son Bronny is “doing extremely well” following his July cardiac arrest and will play basketball again in the upcoming college season.

• GE Partners with University Hospitals: GE HealthCare signed a partnership with Ohio-based University Hospitals to provide equipment and digital solutions. GE will be the sole provider for hundreds of new systems, including digital technology like AI, as well as nuclear medicine, X-ray, vascular and cardiovascular ultrasound, CT, fluoroscopy, surgery, and bone densitometry. The agreement is the latest large equipment move for GE, which also recently provided $30M of CT scanners to St. Luke’s University Health Network in New Jersey.

Patient-Centered Design for Diabetes Care

Glooko’s recently overhauled Mobile App makes it easier than ever for diabetes patients to organize, log, visualize, and share their data. Head over to this conversation with Glooko’s product and design team for a behind-the-scenes look at how patient-centered design is improving diabetes outcomes.

Creating an Exceptional Engagement Experience

With a surge in experience‑oriented disruptors entering the healthcare industry, patient engagement is becoming a crucial competitive differentiator. Get your copy of Nuance’s guide to  delivering intelligent interactions and a better experience at every touchpoint.

Successful RPM Through End-to-End Support

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