The 2022 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference marches on, virtually, with presentations Fierce Healthcare will be following into the evening—and interviews scheduled to the end of the week.
Today, presentations are expected from Zocdoc, Cityblock Health, Headspace, Signify Health, Sharecare, Transcarent and many more.
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UPDATED: Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 3:23 p.m.
JPMorgan Chase launched its new healthcare business arm, Morgan Health, last May, and as the new company begins to near its first birthday, it's turning an eye to the future.
Morgan Health is aiming to promote an accountable care model that puts the employer in the driver's seat of transforming healthcare. The company believes that this model can reshape the employer coverage market, as it drives better access to primary care, member experience and digital engagement.
"We believe fundamentally that accountable care does have the potential to improve matters substantially for the insured population," CEO Dan Mendelson told Fierce Healthcare.
Here's more from my conversation with Mendelson, including a look at Morgan Health's new partnership with Kaiser Permanente and where they see the investment Vera Whole Health going. Story — Paige Minemyer
UPDATED: Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 3:15 p.m.
Whether a consumer is engaged with a healthcare product or not, Sharecare CEO Jeff Arnold said, depends on how that product is tailored to the individual.
“How you make a person feel is the difference between driving and sustaining engagement or not,” he said. “The first step to doing that is it has to be personalized.”
Sharecare’s digital-first health ecosystem collects large amounts of data to generate insights that drive better outcomes, supplemented by a diverse set of health offerings that give the company a leg up in the market, Arnold said.
Those offerings expanded in 2021 with new acquisitions—the digital health company scooped up home health provider CareLinx in August for $65 million after grabbing artificial intelligence startup Doc.ai in January. The company also acquired behavioral health provider MindSciences in 2020.
The company’s adjusted EBITDA lagged in 2021 at $30 million versus $32 million in 2020, impacted by the reversal of COVID-related cost initiatives and other public expenses after the company went public via blank check merger last year.
But Sharecare projects its adjusted EBITDA will nearly double in 2022. The company also expects its full-year 2021 revenue at approximately $415 million and projects $568 million for the new year. — Rebecca Torrence
UPDATED: Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 12:00 p.m.
Six months after the $3 billion merger with Ginger, Headspace Health acquired Sayana, an AI-driven mental health and wellness company.
Sayana will expand Headspace Health’s ability to provide personalized self-care content to its 100 million users, executives said.
Headspace leverages AI to power a significant percentage of the care the company delivers, Headspace Health CEO Russell Glass said during the JPM conference. Through the use of AI, Headspace can recommend content to users to foster healthy habit formation and provide users with personalized action plans.
With the addition of Sayana, Headspace Health will advance its AI capabilities to personalize member experiences, he said. Story — Heather Landi
UPDATED: Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 8:30 a.m.
Healthcare technology company Signify Health is rolling out a new partnership program to connect value-based solutions focused on improving care in and around the home with hospitals, health systems, payers and patients.
"We're capitalizing on the networks, people and resources that we have out in the field," said Kyle Armbrester, Signify Health CEO, during a virtual presentation at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Wednesday.
Signify Health provides a value-based care platform that uses advanced analytics and other technology to shift health services toward the home. The company's network includes 10,000 providers across the U.S., more than 600 clinical and social care coordinators, 3,000 value-based provider sites and 200 community-based organizations.
The Signify Health Partner Program launched with seven inaugural partners including Medalogix, Quartet Health and ReferWell.
Signify's initial focus is on partner technologies and services that support behavioral health, remote patient monitoring, social determinants of health to close care gaps, member engagement, distribution channels to employers and care optimization.
Ecosystem partners are selected based on their ability to improve health outcomes in one or more fundamental ways: for example, activating the home as a key site for care and recovery; equipping value-based providers with the right insights, tools and support to take on risk; and supporting a whole-person approach to care that integrates clinical, social and behavioral factors, Signify Health executives said.
For program partners, Signify Health delivers an opportunity to accelerate innovation through a platform that engages more than 1.4 million people each year through Signify Health’s In-Home Health Evaluations.
Partner companies also have an opportunity to participate in episodes of care programs managed by Signify Health. Through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' bundled payment program and other episodes of care programs, the company has managed more than 1 million cumulative episodes. — Heather Landi
UPDATED: Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 8:00 a.m.
In a panel on health equity, leaders from the government, payers and providers spoke about the challenges of addressing health equity goals and shared solutions to overcoming those hurdles.
Several key strategies were identified by the panelists: data collection and analysis, quality and performance measures and cross-industry collaborations.
Data on race, for example, are difficult to collect, and few standards exist on doing so. Yet, "we can’t improve what we don’t measure," said Meena Seshamani, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Medicare at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. She also suggested screening patients for social determinants of health, which play an outsize role in determining health outcomes, and aligning programs within organizations to be oriented around health equity “so that all people involved are rowing in the same direction."
Sandhya Rao, M.D., chief medical officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, stressed the importance of sharing racial data with provider and employer groups to observe trends together and come up with solutions to address disparities. Another role payers can play is working incentives into contracts, like including quality measures in payment models.
“Incentives help with prioritization," Rao said, but acknowledged that financial incentives alone are not enough to eradicate the long-standing structural racism that causes inequities. It will also take community-provider partnerships to truly serve communities. BCBS Massachusetts is questioning its own vendors on their health equity initiatives, Rao noted, and is making business decisions accordingly. Story — Anastassia Gliadkovskaya