DrFirst CMO Colin Banas

Startups

Providence Spins Out Praia Health After Series A

The rockstar team over at Providence’s Digital Innovation Group officially spun out its fourth digital health startup: Praia Health.

Praia Health is making its grand debut armed with $20M in Series A funding to help hospitals avoid the commoditized care caravan by building deeper relationships with their patients.

To accomplish that, Praia enables the creation of robust consumer profiles that extend beyond the medical record, which might finally give providers a way to build the “digital flywheels” enjoyed in other consumer industries.

Here’s how it works (perfectly explained in these short videos):

• The first step is a “lift and shift” to Praia’s Secure Patient Identity Service (SPI). Once transitioned, SPI seamlessly supports all of the system’s signed-in digital experiences (branded mobile and web apps, patient portals, etc.).

• Praia Health’s PersonStore then enables health system’s to marry consumer identity with consumer data, securely synchronizing the EMR with outside data sources to connect-the-dots between consumer data and outcomes. 

• Those SPI and PersonStore capabilities lay the groundwork for a new class of digital experiences that reflect the health system’s unique brand and offerings, assisted by a full suite of development tools to integrate Praia into existing solutions.

• Once those consumer experiences are available, the flywheel is fueled by adding more solutions to Praia’s partner ecosystem. The platform delivers all of these solutions through a single scalable experience.

Although Praia has some lofty goals, Providence’s incubation model carries some massive advantages that might make them possible.

• Praia has been in use at the 51 hospital system since January 2022, and already supports over 3.5 million user accounts.

• Indiana-based Community Health Network is already lined up as Praia’s first post-launch implementation.

• The aforementioned partner ecosystem is debuting with a whopping 17 startups on-board, including Omada, Wellthy, Kyruus, and Season.

The Takeaway

Although there’s no doubt that Praia’s mission is ambitious, it’s equally apparent that Providence brings plenty of advantages that other founders can only dream of. Providence has a solid track record with its incubator (see: Xealth, DexCare, Circle), and all signs are pointing to Praia keeping that streak alive.

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The Wire

• Aegis Ventures Launches Consortium: Hands-on health system partnerships are all the rage with VCs. Aegis Ventures recently welcomed nine leading health systems as founding members of its new Digital Consortium, which is setting out to co-develop and invest in technology that providers actually want to use (much in the same vein as General Catalyst’s health assurance network). Hat tip to Endeavor Health, IU Health, Memorial Hermann, Northwell, Novant, Ochsner, OSU Wexner Medical Center, Sharp HealthCare, and Stanford Health Care.

• GLP-1s Skyrocketing in Medicare: New KFF data shows that Medicare spending on Ozempic and other GLP-1s is skyrocketing, despite still not being approved to treat weight loss. Total Medicare Part D gross spending on the three GLP-1s used to treat diabetes 10x’d from $57 million in 2018 to $5.7 billion in 2022, although it’s worth noting that Ozempic still only ranked sixth on the list of the top ten drugs  (Eliquis topped it at $15.2 billion). It will be interesting to see what this data looks like for this year with new GLP-1 use cases gaining coverage.

• Surescripts Explores New Ownership: Business Insider got the scoop on electronic prescribing giant Surescripts exploring a change of ownership, most likely to a private equity acquirer. Surescripts reportedly hired investment bank TripleTree to look for potential acquirers, including PE firms that are well-equipped to navigate a complex transaction with unusual ownership structures. Express Scripts and CVS Caremark own half of the company, while the other half is owned by a collection of various trade groups.

• Nabla Appoints New Clinical Director: Nabla continues to bolster its executive team with clinical talent, bringing on board-certified foot and ankle surgeon Dr. Andrew Lundquist as its new Clinical Director. Dr. Lundquist serves as the CMO at one of Minnesota’s largest physician-owned multi-specialty clinics, overseeing clinical operations, quality improvement, and strategic planning. His expertise within the mid-sized clinical market will nicely complement Nabla’s recently appointed Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lee’s expertise with large health systems.

• Oncologist Perspectives on AI: Patients don’t need to fully understand the AI technology used for their care, according to a nationally representative survey of 204 US-based oncologists in JAMA. Most of the oncologists felt that they themselves should be able to explain the AI systems that they’re using (85%), but few believed patients need the same understanding (23%). Less than half viewed legal problems from AI use as physicians’ responsibility (47%), and although most reported feeling responsible for protecting patients from biased AI (77%), few felt confident in their ability to do so (28%).

• Risant Completes Geisinger Acquisition: Risant Health completed its acquisition of Pennsylvania-based health system Geisinger, marking the official launch of Kaiser Permanente’s ambitious new hospital operator. It’s been about a year since the acquisition was approved by regulators, and while Geisinger is the first system to join Risant, it won’t be the last. Risant plans to acquire four to five additional systems over the next five years, with the goal of expanding KP’s value-based care model across the US.

• Oak Street’s Product Strategy: The CareOps team recently hosted a stellar conversation with Oak Street Health’s Colton Ortolf (Head of Product) and Dr. Buchanan (Chief Clinical & Technology Officer) to unpack OSH’s approach to blending healthcare evidence with agile development. The full recording is packed with insight into why OSH ditched the old-school org chart for a “4-in-the-box” model with tightly knit units of clinical, ops, product, and engineering focused on one area (patient engagement, provider experience, etc.).

• Less Charity Care Than Tax Breaks: The latest research from the Lown Institute wasn’t subtle in calling out hospitals for spending less on charity care than the total value of their tax breaks. An eye-popping 80% of the 2,425 nonprofit hospitals analyzed put less toward charity care and community investment than they received in tax exemptions. Bigger hospitals (top 50% by total expenses) devoted a smaller share of their expenditures to community benefits (3.6%) than the smaller half of the hospitals (4.1%).

• Beanstalk Benefits Debut: Beanstalk Benefits is now the latest startup to spring out of Redesign Health’s accelerator crop, launching with $7.5M in seed funding to help employees build their own benefits portfolio. The Beanstalk platform vets and aggregates benefits into a single dashboard to give employees the flexibility to choose their own solutions and give employers the ability to meet the dynamic needs of each member.

• Uneven Gains in Cardiovascular Health: An AHA study showed that gains in cardiovascular health have been limited to wealthier people. A George Washington University study of 27k people with no previous heart attack or stroke from 1988 to 2018 found that the 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease for low-income people was stagnant at above 8%, despite CVD declines among the wealthiest (7.7% to 5.1%) and second wealthiest groups (7.6% to 6.1%).

• MedStar + Dispatch: Washington DC-based MedStar Health announced that it’s partnering with DispatchHealth to bring in-home acute care to recently discharged patients. The partnership will focus on avoiding readmissions within the first three days after discharge by leveraging a combination of Dispatch’s virtual treatment options and timely in-home visits (can be scheduled in as little as two hours), which include services ranging from labs and EKGs to IV fluids and medication support.

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