Week-end roundup: Walmart Health adds 3 FL centers; wearables nudge close to 50%; Dandelion cardiac AI performance pilot; Aledade’s $260M Series F; $10M for DUOS’ older adult assistance platform; Friday Health Plans to close

June 23, 2023 | by

Walmart Health continues Florida expansion with three new centers opening this week–two in Orlando and one in Kissimmee. This adds to their present five in the central Florida area: Orlando, Kissimmee, Ocoee, Sanford, and Winter Garden. By fall, plans are to have 23 in Florida, tracking to the Q1 2024 plan for 75 total, including 28 new locations in the Dallas (10), Houston (8), Phoenix (6), and Kansas City MO (4) metros [TTA 3 Mar]. Becker’s

New study by AnalyticsIQ indicates nearly half the US population may be adopting wearables and using digital health. Usage doubled in the midst of the pandemic (2020-21) with 46% reporting using at least one type of consumer health technology over the past six months. 35% of the 8,000 respondents used smartwatches, with Fitbit (42%) edging out Apple Watch (38%) followed by Samsung Galaxy Watch and Garmin Vivoactive. By other wearable device type:

  • Blood pressure devices: 59% of survey respondents
  • Sleep monitors: 21%
  • ECG monitors are still a niche: 11%
  • Biosensors such as glucose monitors, hormone monitors, fall detectors, and respiratory monitors are still niche at 8%, but the business grew to $25 billion in 2021
  • Smart clothing: a surprising 6%.

Unsurprisingly, wearable health tech usage skewed heavily towards Generation X-ers and men. Among ethnic groups, black and Latino groups had the highest usage.  Healthcare Dive

Dandelion Health testing cardiac dataset for AI reliability and bias. Starting with their data on ECG waveform algorithms, this startup will be validating the performance and bias of artificial intelligence across key racial, ethnic and geographic subgroups. NYC-based Dandelion is a public-service focused precision analytics company that works with three healthcare systems–Sharp HealthCare (San Diego, California), Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, South Dakota) and Texas Health Resources (Arlington, Texas) to aggregate and de-identify clinical data for roughly 10 million US patients. The validation pilot will start on 15 July and last for an initial period of three months. It may be expanded to include additional clinical data modalities such as clinical notes and radiology imaging. According to their founder and CEO Elliott Green, the “pilot program answers the question, does your algorithm do what it’s supposed to do? And does it do it fairly, for everyone?”  Release, Healthcare IT News

Who said big, late raises are a thing of the past? Not if your company is Aledade, which has solidly succeeded in management services for independent primary care practices transitioning to value-based care models. They just gained a shiny new Series F of $260 million on top of last June’s $123 million Series E for a new valuation of $3.5 billion. The Series F round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners along with Venrock, Avidity Partners, OMERS Growth Equity, and Fidelity Management. Aledade has grown to manage 1,500 practices and has acquired in recent months Curia (data analytics for advance care planning) and Iris Healthcare (care planning technology). The additional funds will be used to opportunistically add capabilities into its platforms. FierceHealthcare, Bloomberg (paywalled)

Somewhat more in the recent range is DUOS’ $10 million venture capital raise for a total of $33 million. Leading the round were Primetime Partners, SJF Ventures, and CEOc’s Aging Innovation Fund managed by Castellan Group. What’s unusual is that the platform addresses older adults’ needs as a personal assistant in areas such as care, support in social determinants of health (SDOH), housing, and transportation against Medicare Advantage plan benefits, local community resources, and government programs. The benefit for the older person is to close gaps in care and increase utilization of Medicare Annual Wellness Visits (AWVs). Originally targeted to older adults, the company is broadening its markets to health plans, providers and employers. Release, Mobihealthnews, Home Health Care News

Insolvent ‘insurtech’ Friday Health Plans loses last two health plans to state receivership, will close. Colorado and North Carolina were the last two states the company operated in. Both states’ insurance departments put Friday into receivership this week after the insurer notified them that they could not raise additional cash to continue operations. This affects 35,000 and 39,000 individual health policyholders respectively. Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Nevada were previously placed in receivership. State insurance regulators have assured providers that they can expect to be paid for their services per their contracts. Members generally need to find new insurance companies quickly, however. 323 Friday employees in Alamosa, Colorado, their headquarters, will be laid off between 23 June (this Friday) and 6 July, without the previously promised 60 day notice nor any notice of severance or benefit continuation. Friday is the largest employer in this Denver/Colorado Springs suburb. In its brief lifespan, Friday raised over $300 million and lost over $700 million. FierceHealthcare 22 June, 21 June.  Alamosa Valley Courier  Additional commentary by industry analyst Ari Gottlieb on LinkedIn

UnitedHealthcare pilots predictive analytics model for SDOH, sets out plan to transform into ‘high-performing health plan’

July 15, 2021 | by

UnitedHealthcare and its parent UnitedHealth Group (UHG) have been busy in the past few weeks. Of most interest to our Readers with an interest in data analytics is UnitedHealthcare’s pilot of a social determinants of health (SDOH) initiative that uses de-identified claims data to identify members at high health risk due to social factors. UnitedHealthcare call center staffers then contact members to further determine needs and to assist them with appropriate community resources. These can include assistance with childcare, obtaining internet access, financial assistance with medical bills, healthy food options, and local support groups. Staffers are also trained to extend the conversation beyond the first call.

SDOH factors can impact up to 80% of a person’s health, according to research performed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The predictive analytics model for SDOH was developed with Optum from data gathered from 300 markets and across 100 metrics. Call center staff are also clued to members with needs through keywords or phrases that indicate a need for assistance: “I’m hungry” or “I’m struggling to make ends meet”. The initiative also allows employers to design interventions for their employees.

The pilot is for two employer products, Advocate4Me Elite and Advocate4Me Premier. About half of the contacted members in the pilot have accepted assistance. UnitedHealthcare plans to roll the program out to other fully insured employer plans later this year. Release, FierceHealthcare

UnitedHealth Group, the parent of UnitedHealthcare and Optum, published its annual corporate Sustainability Report. where SDOH has a considerable part. It’s a roadmap for transformation into a high-performing health plan that is part of a modern, high-performing health system–a very high bar for UHG as the largest US health plan. This builds on six points detailed on page 9, most of which SDOH affects:

  • Expanding access to care
  • Improving health care affordability
  • Enhancing the health care experience
  • Achieving better health outcomes
  • Advancing health equity
  • Building healthy communities

SDOH has become significant enough to become the subject of a House bill, HR 2503, the Social Determinants Accelerator Act of 2021, to support community groups in coordinating health and social services through grants, technical assistance, information exchange. It, of course, would not be complete without a federal inter-agency technical advisory council. There is a similar bill in a Senate committee and funding made available to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Determinants of Health Program. FierceHealthcare

CVS Aetna testing social determinants of health with Medicaid HealthTag pilot

November 26, 2020 | by

The meshing of payer, retail, and service enhancements to improve health outcomes is the aim of CVS Aetna’s HealthTag pilot in Louisiana and West Virginia. It’s not terribly complicated. Aetna Medicaid (state health program) members picking up their prescriptions at CVS pharmacies will receive tucked into their prescription bag information on social and community services that may be useful to them, services such as food, housing, and transportation. An outside organization, Unite Us, is the resource for these social care programs. 

HealthTag is part of a broader and older ongoing program, Destination: Health [TTA 27 July 19] with Unite Us and a five-year affordable housing initiative. Unite Us’ community organizations had to do quite a bit of adjusting to virtual assistance from in-person after the pandemic hit. R.J. Briscione, senior director for social determinants of health (SDOH) strategy at CVS Health, told Fierce Healthcare that the objective of the “program is designed to identify Aetna Medicaid members who could use additional interventions to address their social needs, but who might otherwise not receive those potential services.” The pharmacy is a logical place as the members may have frequent interactions with their pharmacists for medications. (What is not said that frequent medication use is a leading indicator of multiple chronic conditions which may be mitigated by improvements in food sources, housing, and transportation to work and doctors, and possibly reducing cost.) 

Unite Us is also working with Lyft car service to provide non-emergency patient transportation to referred health appointments [TTA 13 Mar].

SDOH is not new to US payers, but the CVS Aetna integration and delivery is much more seamless than distribution through a practice office or mailers.  (This Editor worked on a WellCare program delivered through participating practices in their Maryland accountable care organization unit, and it was hard to get traction.)

Is Uber fit to deliver healthcare transport? Healthcare organizations may want to check.

March 10, 2018 | by

Healthcare-related organizations have codes of conduct pertaining to suppliers. Does Uber meet compliance standards? As we reported a few days ago in our article on the burgeoning area of non-emergency medical transport (NEMT) [TTA 9 Mar], Uber Health’s debut with a reputed 100 healthcare organizations has led this Editor to a further examination of Uber, the organization. Uber has had a hard time staying out of the headlines–and the courts–in the past two years, in matters which might give healthcare partners pause.

  • On 21 Nov, Uber reported that the personal data of 57 million users, including 600,000 US drivers, were breached and stolen in October 2016–a full year prior. Not only was the breach announcement delayed by over a year, but also in that year it was made to go away by Uber’s paying off the hacker. Reuters on 6 December: “A 20-year-old Florida man was responsible for the large data breach at Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] last year and was paid by Uber to destroy the data through a so-called “bug bounty” program normally used to identify small code vulnerabilities, three people familiar with the events have told Reuters.” The payment was an extraordinary $100,000. “The sources said then-CEO Travis Kalanick was aware of the breach and bug bounty payment in November of last year.” The Reuters article goes further into the mechanism of the hack. It eventually led to the resignation of their chief security officer, former Facebook/eBay/PayPal security head Joe Sullivan, who ‘investigated’ it using encrypted, disappearing messaging apps. Atlantic.
  • CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick was forced to resign last June after losing the confidence of the company’s investors, in contrails of financial mismanagement, sexual harassment, driver harassment, and ‘bro culture’. This included legal action over Uber’s 2016 acquisition of self-driving truck startup Otto, started by former Googlers who may or may not have lifted proprietary tech from Google before ankling. These are lavishly outlined in Bloomberg and in an over-the-top article in Engadget (with the usual slams at libertarianism). Mr. Kalanick remains on the board and is now a private investor.
  • The plain fact is that Uber is still burning through funds (2017: $1bn) after raising $21.1bn and its valuation has suffered. The new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who earlier righted travel site Expedia, has a tough pull with investors such as SoftBank and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Also Mashable.

Healthcare and NEMT, as noted in our earlier article, are a strong source of potential steady revenue through reimbursement in Medicare Advantage and state Medicaid programs, which is why both Uber and Lyft are targeting it. The benefits for all sides–patients, practices, these companies, sub-contractors, and drivers–can be substantial and positive in this social determinant of health (SDOH).  

Healthcare organizations, especially payers, have strict codes of compliance not only for employees and business practices but also for their suppliers’ practices. Payers in Medicare Advantage and Medicaid are Federal and state contractors. While Uber under its new CEO has shown contriteness in acknowledging an organization in need of righting its moral compass (CNBC), there remains the track record and the aftermath. Both deserve a closer look and review.