Portfolio News

Three Takeaways from Rock Health Summit 2018

Last week, writer George McLaughlin attended the annual Rock Health Summit in San Francisco. He learned a lot at the conference, but in a recent article he shared his three key takeaways. First, he said, everyone is excited about voice—that is, leveraging voice recognition technology to push the digital health and telemedicine industries ahead. Why? The two primary use cases for voice that he heard at the Rock Health Summit were that it would ease provider documentation burden and that it would engage and/or educate patients. Drastically...

Systemness as a Lever for Greater Health System Resilience

“Systemness” is a word coined by Kyruus CEO Graham Gardner to describe operating in a way that enables the system to create more value than the sum of its parts. In a recent essay, Gardner described how systemness can contribute to health systems’ resilience. Hospitals and health systems are under more strain than they’ve ever been, and the word “resilience” is being bandied about everywhere from leadership development books to conversations about physician burnout. While there are plenty of initiatives that organizations can undertake to build...

Capital BlueCross Announces Innovative Virtual Care Pilot Program with Bermudian Springs School District

Capital BlueCross is teaming up with the Bermudian Springs School District to provide convenient, affordable access to healthcare for school district staff during working hours. The partnership, which uses American Well’s Virtual Care system, will help faculty and staff address minor health concerns during the course of the work day. Through the pilot program with the school district, a secure space is available in the campus administration building where staff can do a virtual care visit using an iPad provided by Capital BlueCross. The tablet will only...

Komodo Health Appoints Richard Kho as Chief Revenue Officer and Saiba Sabherwal as Chief Financial Officer

Komodo Health today announced the promotions of Richard Kho, Ph.D., as chief revenue officer and Saiba Sabherwal, M.B.A., as chief financial officer. In addition, the company announced the strategic hire of Julie Rogers as vice president of people & experience. Dr. Richard Kho moves into the chief revenue officer from his most recent position as Komodo’s head of life sciences. He will lead the customer team and oversee sales, account management, and customer success functions. His 18-plus years of experience includes roles at Genentech and Onyx...

Payment Designed for People: Introducing the Primary Care Outcomes Model

Early data shows that alternative payment methods (APMs) such as Alternative Quality Contract or Medicare Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have been associated with lower spending on healthcare and improved use of healthcare resources. However, both of these APMs have produced only modest cost reductions in Medicare spending. Why? Because these models fail to leverage behavioral economics to maximize the impact of incentive dollars on changing physicians’ way of practice. Furthermore, they offer “relatively small rewards with delay and uncertainty while being complicated by too many metrics.” In...