Kyruus has grown quite a bit since it first started as a hospital appointment scheduling platform, and the company aims to continue that trend with its recent acquisition of HealthSparq. With this move, the company plans to bridge the gap between providers and payers and expand their presence in both areas.
Kyruus CTO Chris Gervais described the motivation behind the acquisition in an interview with The Health Care Blog, pointing out that “the relationship between payers and providers has started to change in a lot of different ways.” He says provider groups are becoming further aligned with health plans and aiming to provide payers with a wider general health experience.
The acquisition will be mutually beneficial. Kyruus will be giving HealthSparq access to provider data and receiving information about healthcare costs, which will ultimately help provide cost transparency for consumers. Gervais emphasized this impact, saying that “we’re ending up actually building out a very rich provider directory that is spanning quite a large number of the U.S. provider population.” They can also give consumers access to other care options regardless of where they’re searching from.
Kyruus is currently operating in more than 80 health systems, representing around 750 hospitals and over 300,000 providers. HealthSparq currently works with around 57 health plans, representing about 100 different brands and more than 100 million members. The acquisition will combine these two numbers, creating an opportunity for growth.
Gervais says that the acquisition did not come without obstacles, one of the biggest being virtual integration due to the pandemic. He says it was a new process to combine two companies when 99 percent of people on both sides had not met each other, and for that reason the acquisition took longer than usual. He says the companies have been able to adapt to the new conditions, noting that from a people perspective “it’s been wonderful because we’ve met, and now work with, people who actually share a very similar value system to us to begin with.”
When asked about next steps for the company, Gervais had a few things Kyruus is aiming to improve. He said that in-person care is going to be different for people when they return, from checking in from their car, to new temporary locations cropping up for certain health services. He said that in these new circumstances, Kyruus plans to expand help to patients getting into appointments up front, while also helping health systems reach more patients. On the other side of that, they want to aid health systems with payments.
Listen to the full interview here.