Eating disorders often start at a younger age, but they don’t solely affect this population. Recognizing this, virtual eating disorder support company Equip announced Tuesday that it is now treating adults as well as adolescents. The company also announced an investment from General Catalyst, which helped expand its platform to adults. The amount was not disclosed.
“There is a very pervasive, really dense stereotype that eating disorders only affect 15- to 25-year-old thin, White girls,” said Dr. Erin Parks, chief clinical officer and co-founder of Equip, in an interview. “That is true, it does affect them. But it is not only them.”
She added that because so few people have access to treatment, many older adults have had their eating disorder for a very long time and need support.
San Diego-based Equip, which was founded in 2019, previously focused on those ages 6 to 24. The startup is now expanding to serve people of all ages. The virtual company operates in all 50 states and is in-network with several insurance companies, including Aetna, Elevance, Optum, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare. It connects patients with a care team that includes a therapist, dietitian, physician and peer and family mentor.
Different ages require different kinds of treatment, according to Parks. With its younger patients, the company uses family-based treatment, in which the family is brought in to help care for the patient. For adults, the company is using a method called enhanced cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a highly individualized treatment that addresses thoughts, feelings and behaviors affecting the patient’s eating disorder.
Parks said that when it comes to adults, individual treatment is often the best way to go because they may not have a support group. Sometimes when adults have been sick for a long time, they’ve “pushed away” a lot of their family and peers, or they may be too busy with work to build that support group.
There are other virtual solutions for eating disorders as well, including Arise and Within. Arise offers coaching with a care advocate who has lived experience with an eating disorder, therapy, nutrition counseling, group support and psychiatry. Within provides access to a care team that includes dietitians, therapists, nurses and peers.
The expansion to adults was powered by a recent investment by General Catalyst. In total, Equip has raised more than $75 million. With the funding, the company brought on a new president, Nikia Bergan. It also updated its technology and trained its providers in treating adults. In addition, it’s planning to use the funding to gain more Medicaid contracts, Parks said.
Equip considers itself an alternative to brick-and-mortar eating disorder treatments, which often require patients to stay at the treatment facility for a certain period. Parks said the benefit of a virtual program is that patients can be treated as they live their normal lives.
“[If you take] someone out of their life and give them a bunch of skills, then all of the sudden they plop back into their life and have all these triggers that they aren’t equipped to deal with,” Parks argued. “One of the great things about getting treatment while still being able to go to school, still being able to go to your job, still being able to parent your kids, is that you get to work with your providers on your real-life triggers as they come up.”
Parks is likely looking to replicate the positive results it claims to have achieved in the adolescent population in this new, adult population. In its annual outcomes report published earlier this year, the company cited that 81% of its adolescent patients reached or maintained their target weight within one year.
Photo credit: Bohdan Skrypnyk, Getty Images
The commercial market has been slower to adopt value-based care than the public market, but there are ways to move the process along successfully, executives said Monday.
During a panel at the Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Summit 2023 held in Chicago, healthcare leaders discussed the challenges and opportunities in advancing value-based care in commercial health plans. The panelists were Mark Hansberry, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of HealthPartners; Ellen Kelsay, president and CEO of Business Group on Health; and Tiffany Albert, senior vice president of health plan business at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.
Bloomington, Minnesota-based HealthPartners, which is an integrated healthcare organization serving more than 1.8 million members, has had some success with value-based care in the commercial space, Hansberry claimed. He shared five rules for scaling value-based care in the commercial market:
1. Payers and providers in a value-based arrangement need to have a shared understanding of what value is for patients, Hansberry said.
“You have to have a universal definition of what value means so that when clinicians look at you as a payer … they need to acknowledge that what you’re saying a clinical outcome is is actually a good clinical outcome, a good measure of performance,” he stated.
2. It’s important to ensure that the providers in the value-based arrangement are able to and willing to take the risk associated with value-based care.
“Most care systems weren’t built to actually manage risk,” Hansberry said. “That wasn’t their job. Their job was to take care of sick people. Now we’re asking them to do something else. How do you actually support those individuals on that journey?”
3. Payers need to support providers engaging in value-based care with “real-time, actionable data and consultation,” Hansberry said.
“It’s not just a data dump or a big Excel file that you pass over and you say good luck with it,” he stated. “Because, by the way, if they perform well in those value-based contracts, you do too as a payer. You want them to perform well. So you want to provide them with good, insightful, actionable data that’s risk-adjusted, that is connected to their practice — not just an amorphous health system — but to their practice so they can take action on those insights. But then you also want to supplement that with that consultation along the way.”
4. The incentives in the value-based contract must be aligned to “enable that [provider] to reap the benefits of the value that they’re creating for those members,” according to Hansberry.
5. Ultimately, a value-based contract comes down to trust between all the parties. But Hansberry noted that this is easier for HealthPartners as an integrated health system.
“We’re fortunate because we’re both a health plan and a care system,” he said.
He added that success in value-based care doesn’t happen overnight, which is partially why it’s difficult to scale.
“It takes time to build trust,” Hansberry stated.
Photo: atibodyphoto, Getty Images
The year is 2012. Lo-fi is still the Instagram filter of choice; the “Harlem Shake” will soon become the viral dance du jour; Jenna Lyons is not yet a Real Housewife. I am a freshman at Ohio State University (pre-pretentious “the”) where I spend much of my time trying personas on for size and breaking my own heart in futile attempts to force one of them to fit. I teach myself to smoke cigarettes and go to shows at Newport Music Hall alone. I dye my hair black and furrow a brow at cloying poetry at Cafe Kerouac. And for several Thursdays, I take pulls from a bottle of cereal-infused vodka and let boys in polo shirts feel me up on a sticky dance floor. Multitudes, I tell myself. Inside me are hundreds of women—all of whom long for more than what they currently have: purpose, passion, and more than anything, more people to call a friend.
Back then, there was at least one foolproof way to achieve the latter at Ohio State: Join a sorority. Only I was prideful to the point of arrogance, and admitting to myself that I was desperately lonely seemed as lame as trying to light your own cigarette outside a club with bands you don’t recognize on its marquee. Ultimately, the dress codes and forced mingling—and some stuff I’ve since addressed in therapy—kept me squarely in the women’s, gender, and sexuality studies department until graduation day.
Despite Gen Z’s tendency to balk at almost every institution and tradition, the Panhellenic system seems to have as much staying power as my rush ruminations. In 2021, as the world reeled from a pandemic, the #BamaRush hashtag was viewed on TikTok over half a billion times globally. It became, as the New York Times wrote, must-see TV. A year later, Jezebel wrote about its return to relevance in 2022, calling it a continuation of “homogeneous white feminine aesthetics of enforced social hierarchy.” Judging by this year’s similar social media content, the culture hasn’t changed—even if some candidates have become more frank about the system’s offenses.
In recent years, the recruitment process has sparked conversations about queerphobia, classism, racism, and the elitism of Greek life, but the Panhellenic system has yet to evolve as much as its prospective participants might have. Non-binary people remain excluded from the process, and a certain type of participant (heteronormative) is still rewarded more often than the alternative. Nevertheless, rush persists.
The industry surrounding it does too. Over the last decade, rush consultants have capitalized on young women’s attempts at achieving social acceptance among their peers; with some charging up to thousands of dollars to advise on what to wear, how to act, and who to project as during the process. Per new reports, business is booming.
Now that I’m more amenable to the fact that life is nothing if not a series of unpleasant, unavoidable exercises that, at times, involve being perceived, I sought out the aid of three renowned rush consultants to assess the current me on the criteria that once stopped 18-year-old Audra from entering the recruitment process: social media presence, conversation, and wardrobe. Enter Trisha Addicks, Sloan Anderson, and Lorie Stefanelli—all of whom were featured in HBO’s Bama Rush and boast solid success rates (read: all of their clients have gotten a bid, even if it’s not the one they wanted).
Is 29-year-old Audra any more rush-ready than the 18-year-old iteration? You decide!
Conversation: Be a Brooke, Not A Sam
Talking to people is daunting, and maintaining interest in what others have to say is, occasionally, impossible. Unfortunately, both are crucial parts of rush. How does one overcome this? Per the advice of most consultants, by creating a script. Some consultants—like Anderson, the founder of Getting the Bid–have explicit topics to avoid. If you watched Bama Rush, you likely know them as “The Five B’s”: Boys, Booze, Bible, Bucks, and Biden. Basically, anything that’s oppressed people is strictly off-limits.
According to Anderson, one must aspire to be what she’s dubbed a “Brooke” not a “Sam.” They’re just avatars, but Brooke is affable, easy to talk to, and the kind of person that inspires friendship. Sam, by comparison, makes one work a bit harder for her affection which, of course, is incompatible with the recruitment process.
“I’m just going to ask you three questions and just go with your gut answer,” Anderson instructs. The first is simple: “What’s your major?” English Literature, with a minor in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. The second: “Where are you from?” Toledo, Ohio.
Then, the third arrives: “What are your passions?” Shit. Food? Answering alcohol might be a bit of a concern, and saying books or movies just seems cliche. “Story-telling,” I hear myself respond after a beat too long. “I feel the most myself and the most connected to humanity when I’m writing.” It’s only a hypothetical conversation, but I’m suddenly conscious of the fact that, for some reason, I’m practically popping a blood vessel to sound impressive.
“With your first two answers, you gave a fact,” Anderson assesses. “That’s great, but sometimes it’s hard to ask that next random question. With your last answer, you included stories and specific examples that allowed me to find a ‘me too’ moment.” In accordance with Anderson’s own descriptions, I am both a Brooke and a Sam. Again, multitudes.
If you hate one-on-one conversation or if all that made you cringe then maybe the potential new member (PNM) video is more approachable. Every person partaking in rush must submit a short recording known as the PNM. Depending on the university, the video must be 60-120 seconds long—no more, no less. You’ll be instantly eliminated if it’s a second longer. In that time, a candidate is expected to answer prompts like “What is the best piece of advice you have received?” or “If you could live in any movie, TV show, or book, what would it be and why?”
Per Addicks, though, it’s only the first half of the video—and not so much one’s answers, but rather how they deliver them—that really matters. “The traditionally top-tier sororities…they look at 30 seconds of your video and they know and that is based on your articulation. If you’re not going to Alabama and you’re like, ‘Hey y’all,’ then you’re out. If you’re sounding like, smalltown–for some schools–then that gets you cut,” Addicks, the founder of It’s All Greek To Me, explains. “It’s about that first 15 seconds that really matters. The content doesn’t matter nearly as much as how you say it. They don’t care if you like cats, or what your passion is. They want to know that you can express yourself in a certain way.”
Stefanelli, the founder of NYC Greek Chic, suggests using humor to make an impression. She tells me about a recent client whose prompt was to describe her perfect day. Stefanlli told her to borrow the April 25 joke from Miss Congeniality. It worked.
Social Media Presence: No Tits, Tattoos, or Too Many Boyfriend Photos
“So, your Instagram is great,” Addicks begins. Phew. “But my rule is: no more pictures of you alone.” Her explanation for such relies on an anecdote about a former client whom she refers to as the “thirstiest human on the planet.” Apparently, the young woman’s Instagram account boasted nothing but photos of herself, yet she ignored Addicks’ instructions to archive or delete a few of them. “She had probably 150 pictures of herself and no other pictures because she thought she was really pretty—and she is—but she thought that everybody wanted to see how pretty she was all the time and nothing else…there was no substance there at all.”
Not only are platforms like Instagram and TikTok viable networking tools, but they’re also the first impression a sorority’s recruitment chair et al. gains of a candidate after they register. As Anderson put it, a candidate’s assessment starts the second their paperwork is submitted, and social media—Instagram, especially—is one of the first platforms that gets a peek.
There are a few things every admissible account shouldn’t have—namely, too many bikini or boyfriend shots. As for what it should spotlight: pictures of your friends. Why? Anderson cites an anecdote from Jonah Berger, a Wharton professor and best-selling author who focuses on psychology and marketing, about choosing between three groups of people at a party.
The three hypothetical groups, to paraphrase Anderson’s descriptions, are: People who look like they hike, others who are outfitted in monochrome (think Kanye West), and, finally, a crew that looks just like you. According to Berger’s theory, humans are automatically drawn to the latter. Apparently, we make the assumption that if people present the way we do, we have things in common with them.
“They’re not spending hours and hours and hours looking at someone’s account,” Anderson continues. ‘They were maybe looking at an account for a couple of minutes and making snap, rational decisions. ‘Does Audra post like us?’ Yes or no? ‘Do her friends look like us?’ Yes or no. That’s why you do want to occasionally have a picture of your friends because it helps you get into the right sorority. They’re [recruiters] like, ‘Oh, okay, she kind of hangs out with these people. We look like that.’ Or they can be like, ‘Oh, she looks like an ABC.’”
Given I’ve rarely posted my friends on my grid since I was actually eligible for rush, and I care very little about maintaining a discernible online identity, where I’d be placed seems ambiguous. I ask Addicks and Stefanelli. “You do wear makeup,” Addicks notes while scanning my Instagram. (On the day of our interview, my face is bare, hence her observation.)
“Who drinks Coors Light out of a straw?” she prompts, referencing a photo wherein I am—drunkenly—doing just that at a friend’s birthday party. (The friend was, unfortunately, not pictured.) To my horror, Addicks then lands on a series of selfies followed by a meme that encourages indulging in one’s vanity. “Stop being deep, just be hot,” she reads. To my shock, she giggles. Meanwhile, my knuckles have turned white from gripping the edges of my desk.
When Stefanelli takes a look at my profile, her tone is dismayed but not overtly disciplinarian: “Obviously, there’s a picture of you in your bikini, like showing off your tattoo…” She doesn’t say much else. She doesn’t have to. Eighteen-year-old Audra would’ve removed it from the grid. But 29-year-old Audra? She’s all right with possibly being perceived as the thirstiest human on the planet.
How To Look: “You Don’t Have To Be Blonde Or Beautiful.” But You Best Not Wear Doc Martens.
I don’t need to ask Anderson about how a candidate should present themselves IRL. There’s an entire page—complete with 12 hyper-specific guides and live links to approved items of clothing—devoted to it on her website. She offers five tips, but I immediately get stuck on the first: “Wear what you are most confident in.”
There are faux pas to take into account too. There’s a time and place for a hat, Anderson writes, but recruitment isn’t one of them. No old clothing is suitable, nor are jean cutoffs, cotton dresses, flip flops, TEVAS, running shoes, or Birkenstocks. (Clearly, Anderson hasn’t seen the final scene in Barbie.) Any heel higher than three inches is discouraged too.
The 18-year-old iteration of me and my current one hasn’t changed all that much when it comes to style. We both feel most secure in leather, platform boots, and absolutely zero color but black. But recruitment isn’t concerned with making allowances for one’s comfort zone. Confidence, it’s suggested, comes from conformity.
So if a candidate also happens to be in the throes of, say, trying on different personas, outfitting one’s wardrobe to meet the guidelines could very quickly become expensive, regardless of all of Anderson’s disclaimers. For example, the only shoe I could envision myself wearing—only after at least ten Coors Lights—from one of the guides is a Dolce Vita platform sandal that’s priced at $134.95 on Amazon. Most dresses, too, range from about $30 to over $200, thus, putting together four to five outfits—one per round—or more isn’t so cheap. Stefanelli is sympathetic to this.
“I basically approach it like, I’m not going to push anybody to spend money they don’t want to spend,” Stefanelli said. “I totally get if you feel like your dollar might be going further somewhere else. Personally, I do have set rates, but I’m more than willing to work with a client.”
Stefanelli cites occasions wherein she offers a discount (if a parent is a member of the military, law enforcement, or firefighter) or, even sessions that are completely without cost. She describes one client who took two jobs to pay for her sessions, including one at J.Crew for the discounts.
“I also found out that her dad was very sick with Lou Gehrig’s disease, and I was really upset by that because I was like, ‘Oh my God, this girl is killing herself to get into a sorority,’” Stefanelli says. “I lost my dad my senior year of college. So, I just stopped charging her because I was like, if she needs a sisterhood being that far away from home and with her dad who’s sick, I want her to have that community.”
I imagine it’s laborious for young women going through the process as the one Stefanelli mentions to, as Addicks instructed in our interview, “act happy to be there, even if you’re not.” How does adhering to a dress code and making idle chit-chat with strangers not feel trivial—let alone completely inauthentic—in those circumstances? A core tenet of every rush consultant is to “be yourself,” but how can someone stay true to oneself if every part of the process, especially how you present yourself, feels so untrue?
“You don’t have to be blonde and beautiful and you don’t have to have a certain style. What you have to have, like a job interview, is clean hair,” Addicks says. It has nothing to do with you as a person. If you didn’t want to wear makeup, we would never say ‘wear makeup.’ I hate makeup, so I wouldn’t want it. But I also wouldn’t want to show up looking greasy. We have skincare tips and all that stuff that goes into it but we’re not trying to change someone.”
“Standing out” is another rule of rush consulting, but only so long as the client still fits in. Be yourself…but only in a way that shows your capability—or willingness—to abide by the system’s stringent social standards. Where does that leave a candidate whose identity is less heteronormative? A girl who’s just bad at acting happy to be there? Or the 18-year-old whose self-esteem relies on being a bit of a rebel?
“Sure, if you want to wear Doc Martens, wear them all the time,” Addicks says. “But if you walk out of your dorm room to go to your first round of rush and everybody else is wearing espadrilles or sandals, your confidence is going to plummet.”
I note that when I was eligible for rush, I would’ve felt at my most assured in Doc Martens and tell Addicks that, as her pretend client, I’ve chosen them for an event. I wore what made me feel most like myself. Would that choice be at all respected during recruitment?
“If you are a client that would be a perfect example of you not listening to the experts. No, it’s not respected,” she tells me. “But if you can’t find one pair of shoes, out of all the shoes that are appropriate for rush, then we have bigger problems.”
It’s a shared belief amongst Addicks, Anderson, and Stefanelli that if their clients are presenting themselves well—maintaining the approved social media customs, speech patterns, wardrobes etc.—and “being themselves,” then they’ll inevitably find their place among the Panhellenic universe. The process is superficial by nature, but being in a sorority isn’t, Addicks maintains when I push back.
So, the kind of assimilation recruitment requires is just one of life’s innumerable, inescapable experiences. It’s disingenuous, but given we’re asked to do it until the day we die, sometimes, it’s just easier to opt in early. Regardless, I’ve never respected 18-year-old me’s choice to stave off the inevitable a little while longer more than I do right now. She’s done okay. She chose Doc Martens.
It’s no secret that hospitals and health systems have been facing severe financial woes in the past couple years. These money problems have forced many providers to make what they likely felt were tough but necessary choices — such as shuttering underperforming service lines, laying off staff and using debt collection agencies to obtain payment from patients.
Some of these tactics have even invited negative scrutiny. However, a new report argued that commercial payers should shoulder some of the blame when it comes to how hospitals are managing their dire financial circumstances.
Compared to government payers, commercial payers take significantly longer to pay hospitals and deny claims at a higher frequency — often without a justifiable reason to do so — according to the report published by consulting firm Crowe. These delays mean that hospitals are waiting longer than they need to receive commercial payments — during a time when they need cash flow to be expedited, not needlessly delayed, the report said.
Crowe analyzed data from the more than 1,800 hospitals that use its revenue cycle analytics platform and found that about 45% of a typical hospital’s patient population is covered by a commercial health insurance carrier.
Commercially insured patients have conventionally been thought of as hospitals’ preferred population. This is because hospitals can negotiate prices with commercial payers, and these payers usually pay higher rates than government payers like Medicare and Medicaid. For the average net revenue per inpatient case, commercial plans pay $18,156.50 compared to $14,887.10 from Medicare. For outpatients, commercial plans pay $1,606.86 for the average patient case, compared to $707.30 paid by Medicare.
Reimbursement rates may be higher among commercial payers, but getting them to pay in a timely manner is an entirely different story, per the report. During the first quarter of this year, commercial payers initially denied 15.1% of inpatient and outpatient claims compared to 3.9% for Medicare over the same period, according to the report.
Crowe analyzed the claim denial category of prior authorization and precertification denials. These occur when a payer denies a claim based on their decision that a provider did not get prior approval for care before it was delivered or that the care rendered wasn’t necessary based on the patient’s medical diagnosis.
Last year, the prior authorization/precertification denial rate for inpatient claims among commercial payers was 2.8%, up from 2.4% in 2021. This rate increased to 3% during the first three months of 2023, but the denial rate for traditional Medicare was just 0.2% during the same period.
Another claim denial category that the report examined is the request for information (RFI). RFI denials happen when a payer decides not to process a claim because it is missing some type of required documentation, such as a signature or copy of the medical record. In this category, commercial payers’ denial rate is 12 times higher than Medicare, the report found.
Most of the claims that commercial payers deny eventually get paid. However, the administrative effort required for hospitals to turn an initially-denied claim into a payment costs a good deal of time and money — two things in short supply at hospitals
To obtain payment from a denied claim, a provider must investigate the claim, determine what they have to do to rectify the problem and resubmit the claim — a process that can take weeks — said Colleen Hall, the managing principal for Crowe’s healthcare consulting group, in a recent interview. This process creates “an aging accounts receivable situation” for the provider and delays them from receiving much-needed cash.
“There certainly are several for-profit insurers out there. I won’t name names, but I think that those for-profit entities are in direct conflict with the nonprofit hospitals. I don’t know what goes on in the for-profit payer side of things, but could there be actions that they’re deploying to delay payments? Potentially. There have certainly been denials that our clients, as providers, have to manage only to find were denied for no reason,” Hall declared.
In the first quarter of this year, about a third of the claims that providers submitted to commercial payers took more than three months to get paid, the report found.
It’s difficult for hospitals to gain steady financial footing when the payers that have the best reimbursement rates are holding onto a third of their claims payments for more than 90 days, Hall pointed out.
Photo: santima.studio, Getty Images
Oshi Health — a virtual care provider for patients with digestive disorders — announced its first contract with a commercial insurer on Thursday. The New York-based company has entered into a value-based contract that provides Aetna members with in-network access to its specialized treatment.
The partnership comes nearly two years after CVS Health, Aetna’s parent company, invested in Oshi as part of the startup’s Series A fundraising.
Founded in 2019, Oshi built a virtual-first care platform designed to help patients achieve lasting control over chronic digestive conditions. The company hires gastroenterologists, nurse practitioners, dieticians and GI-specialized behavioral healthcare providers to quickly reach a diagnosis and guide individualized treatment. Patients are also assigned a care coordinator, who can help them find in-network providers if they need services like a colonoscopy or endoscopy.
The startup prides itself on providing whole-person care, which includes often-neglected dietary and psychosocial interventions, Oshi CEO Sam Holliday said in a recent interview.
“Over the past decade, there’s been a recognition that many gastrointestinal disorders are actually triggered by the signaling between your gut and your brain. A whole class of GI conditions has actually been renamed as disorders of the gut-brain interaction, or DGBIs,” he explained. “Things like gut-directed cognitive behavioral therapy can really reframe patients’ thought patterns and dampen the brain signaling that causes their symptoms, making symptoms feel less severe.”
Dietary interventions and behavioral therapy are proven methods to alleviate GI patients’ symptoms, and they’re often more effective than medication, Holliday pointed out. But these services are rarely available to GI patients because they haven’t been reimbursed historically, he added.
That’s why these interventions are a core part of the care patients receive under Oshi’s new contract with Aetna.
“One of the challenges in GI is that there aren’t very good quality measures. Really, the main things we focus on as a country is getting people screened for colorectal cancer, But we don’t really have measures for what matters to patients, who are the people suffering. What we think is the best measure to use is symptom control,” Holliday explained.
The root cause of GI symptoms usually stems from dietary or behavioral health reasons, and traditional, medication-centric GI care does not address those underlying causes, he declared. Patients end up continually seeking care — and driving costs up — because their symptoms are still bothering them. Through Oshi’s value-based contract with Aetna, “the value aspect being measured is Oshi’s ability to reduce that utilization downstream,” Holliday said.
Oshi will measure its care teams’ ability to sustainably control patients’ symptoms through a mix of medication, dietary adjustments and gut-brain psychology interventions. The company will track metrics such as reductions in emergency department visits and patients’ reported symptoms.
“We get paid a certain amount as we’re providing the care. Then, if we’ve gotten to a good level of patient satisfaction, symptom control and reduced utilization at the end of the measurement period, we have a bonus opportunity. And if we don’t achieve certain levels, there is a downside,” Holliday explained.
Aetna shares in the upside if Oshi hits its goals, but the payer is protected against potential downside. If Oshi doesn’t achieve as good outcomes as the partners had hoped, Aetna won’t have to pay the startup the full amount for care, Holliday declared.
The partnership is in its first phase, meaning Aetna members can access Oshi’s services in the following six states: Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Photo: TLFurrer, Getty Images
Paragonix Technologies — a company that launched in 2010 as a response to the lack of innovation in the donor organ preservation and transport process — closed a Series B funding round on Tuesday. The $24 million round was led by Signet Healthcare Partners.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company provides transplant centers and organ procurement organizations (OPOs) with medical devices designed for the preservation and transportation of donor organs.
The traditional method of preservation requires the organ to be transported in a cooler of crushed ice. Due to unstable temperatures, many facilities that receive organs preserved in this manner report that they arrive frozen and damaged, said Paragonix CEO Lisa Anderson.
“Paragonix determined there was an opportunity for a more scientifically reproducible, measurable and reliable solution to transporting an organ from a donor to recipient,” she said. “We set out to create a new standard for organ preservation and transport that would provide the care and quality of handling commensurate with transporting such a valuable gift and improve patient outcomes worldwide.”
Paragonix’s devices are made from a series of interconnected systems that work together to provide a cool and sterile environment within a consistent range of 4-8° Celsius. The company sells three devices, each designed for a different organ (heart, lung and liver). All have been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration.
Each device works slightly differently based on specific user needs related to the organ type, Anderson said. For example, the heart preservation device has pouches filled with proprietary cooling solutions that keep the organ at optimal temperatures during transport. The heart is contained within a nested canister and is then housed in a wheeled shipper container that works to protect and insulate the inner contents.
All of Paragonix’s devices display the organ’s temperature while it is being transported. They also use bluetooth monitoring and tracking technology to allow surgeons to track the organ’s exact location throughout its journey, even in flight, Anderson pointed out.
Paragonix markets and sells its devices to transplant centers and OPOs across the U.S. and Europe. Last year, over one in five thoracic donor organs transplanted in the U.S. were preserved using a Paragonix device, Anderson declared. She also said that 19 out of the 30 largest U.S. heart transplant programs rely on Paragonix devices to safely preserve, track and transport organs to their intended recipients.
There are a few other companies that make devices to preserve donor organs, such as Organ Recovery Systems and Bridge to Life. But Anderson contended Paragonix’s devices are easier to use.
“Most other organ preservation devices are extremely complicated, labor intensive and require special personal or extensive training, while Paragonix’s devices are lightweight, user friendly, and a user can be trained in less than an hour,” she declared.
Anderson explained that her company’s main competition is the legacy way of transporting organs, as many organizations still receive damaged organs that were transported using the over-ice method. The medical industry needs to move away from this method of organ preservation because devices like the ones that Paragonix sells are clinically proven to improve patient outcomes and reduce the risk of post-surgical complications, she declared.
Picture: Getty Images, ThomasVogel
The rift between hospitals and commercial insurers is age old. But a new survey shows the relationship isn’t going to improve any time soon.
The American Hospital Association (AHA) survey, released Wednesday, found that 78% of hospitals and health systems said their relationship with commercial insurers is getting worse. Less than 1% said their relationship is improving and the rest said it has stayed the same.
The survey included 304 respondents representing 772 hospitals. All of the respondents are members of AHA.
One of the main culprits behind the worsening relationship appears to be certain practices of commercial insurers, such as prior authorization. The report found that 95% of hospitals and health systems said staff time spent seeking prior authorization approval is increasing. Meanwhile, 62% of prior authorization denials are eventually overturned, the report found.
Aside from time spent on administrative procedures, costs may also be a factor in the relationship souring. A whopping 84% said the cost of complying with insurer policies is also increasing.
“Misuse of utilization management tools like prior authorization has several negative implications for patients and the health care system,” AHA said in the report. “Prior authorization denials can result in delays of necessary treatment for patients and ultimately lead to unexpected medical bills. The extensive approval process that doctors and nurses must go through adds wasted dollars to the health care system through overuse of prior authorization, inefficient submission processes, excessive requests for unnecessary documentation and the need to reprocess inappropriate payment and coverage denials.”
AHA also takes issue with claims denials, stating that commercial health insurers are “increasingly delaying and denying coverage of medically necessary care.” However, 50% of claims denials that are appealed are overturned, AHA said.
There are financial consequences to these delays and denials, AHA stated. The survey found that 50% of hospitals have more than $100 million in accounts receivable for claims that are older than six months, totaling $6.4 billion in delayed or potentially unpaid claims among the 772 hospitals in the survey. Another 35% of respondents said they’ve lost $50 million or more in revenue because of denied claims.
“These payment delays and denials for medically necessary care have serious implications for the financial stability of health care providers and compound fiscal challenges plaguing our health care system,” AHA said.
The report also provided several policy recommendations, including streamlining the prior authorization process and increasing oversight on insurers. Additionally, the organization sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor, calling for action against commercial payers.
“Health care coverage must work better for patients and the providers who care for them. We urge you to take additional steps to ensure adequate oversight of commercial health plans, including those offering Medicare Advantage plans, this open enrollment season,” the letter stated. “Individuals and families should feel assured that the plan they choose during open enrollment will actually be there for them when they need care.”
America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) declined to comment publicly on AHA’s survey, but previously told MedCity News that commercial insurers’ practices are needed to reduce expenses for patients.
“Health insurance providers advocate for the people they serve by ensuring that the right care is delivered at the right time in the right setting — and covered at a cost that patients can afford. Prior authorization prevents waste and improves affordability for patients, consumers, and employers,” Kristine Grow, AHIP spokesperson, previously said. “Health insurance providers have a comprehensive view of the health care system and each patient’s medical claims history and work to ensure that medications or treatments prescribed by clinicians are safe, effective, and affordable for patients. This results in better outcomes and lower costs for patients.”
Photo: santima.studio, Getty Images
From left: Ayush Jain of Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund; Ayse McCracken of Ignite Healthcare and INNOVATE Health Ventures; Max Rosett of Research Bridge Partners; and Dr. Hubert Zajicek of Health Wildcatters
When it comes to investment, including healthcare and biotech, companies in the Bay area, Boston and New York tend to get the lion’s share of venture capital. But in recent years there’s been greater attention to investment in companies beyond those regions. The Covid-19 pandemic also played a significant role as people were forced to limit travel and use Zoom to connect their In a panel discussion at INVEST Digital Health, healthcare and life science investors discussed investment strategies and why they are placing their funding bets in states like Texas, Indiana, Utah and Arkansas.
The panel, Investing between the coasts, moderated by Dr. Hubert Zajicek, CEO, partner and co-founder of Health Wildcatters, offered a window into how investors are finding companies that match their investment theses, even in states that are not thought of as startup hubs. The panel was sponsored by Lyda Hill Philanthropies.
“We were the most active investor in Arkansas last year,” said Ayush Jain, a senior associate with Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. The fund, which was started by Steve Case of AOL fame, has made investments in more than 200 companies in 40 states since 2017.
The video platform Zoom has made an indelible impact towards democratizing investment across the country, according to Ayse McCracken, a founder and board chair with Ignite Healthcare in Houston and president of eNNOVATE Health Ventures. Ignite focuses on women-led digital health and medical device startups, while eNNOVATE invests in a broad array of startups across the continent of Africa.
McCracken said it was one of the unintended consequences of the pandemic.
“[Zoom] has allowed us to connect with entrepreneurs all across the country and all across the world and match them with mentors across the U.S. All of a sudden, we were working with an expanded ecosystem coast to coast, and we were working with startups coming from all across the country. We have eight of the 22 companies [in our latest cohort] that are coming from the Texas market — San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston, which is great. We’d love to see Texas continue to grow. Denver has been another location where we’re seeing a number of entrepreneurs come from, also Minneapolis.”
Max Rosett, a principal with Research Bridge Partners, conceded that Zoom has been useful for connecting with and keeping in touch with portfolio companies in areas that would have otherwise been costly to travel to from his offices in Salt Lake City.
“This is going to sound incredibly trite and yet it’s incredibly real. Now that it’s okay to have board meetings over Zoom, life is much easier,” Rosett said.
Research Bridge Partners, which focuses on life science companies, is trying to chip away at what it refers to on its website as the “geographic misalignment” of venture capital in the Bay area and Boston. It also calls attention to trends among larger venture capital firms of creating lab-to-market systems to advance ideas towards financial liquidity that make it tougher for midcontinent principal investigators to access, because these firms favor institutional brand and geographical proximity to their offices.
Although everyone is pleased that the worst of the pandemic appears to be over, Zajicek said that in the past two years the accelerator has received a record number of applications from all over the world, which has spurred the development of a hybrid program combining in-person and Zoom-based interactions with startups in its cohorts. It has added an international flavor to its startup portfolio. Add to that the accelerator’s advantageous base in Dallas, in close proximity to an airport with the most direct flights in the country.
“It has flattened the world in non-trivial ways,” Zajicek said.
Health Wildcatters recently moved its offices to Pegasus Park, a 13-floor building that offers lots of space for healthcare and life science startups to work and connect with investors and collaboration partners.
Jain agreed that Zoom can offer a useful complement to in-person meetings and has made it easier to foster relationships with startups. He emphasized the importance of regional startup incubator and accelerator spaces, which frequently host demo days and other events to bring investors and startups together. They can also prove useful for investors from out of town seeking to plug into the regional startup ecosystem.
“If there’s a city that you gravitate towards, whether it’s because of a particular industry strength, or a personal connection, those are factors to leverage when you build relationships in those cities and find deal flow there,” Jain said. “That’s something we lean on a lot. We’re not lead investors. So we rely on finding opportunities to invest in startups, mostly through local regional investors, accelerators, incubators, places like Pegasus Park, where there’s a ton of companies. There’s some institutions in other cities like this. I think finding those and really honing in on them and building relationships is important.”