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A different approach to lower costs |
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| Last month, Garner Health raised $100 million, vaulting its valuation to $2.7 billion. |
| At first, this startup sounded more like a doctor-rankings company, which I’d typically think of as more of a media company than a health tech one. But in a conversation with CEO Nick Reber, I realized I was hearing about a different kind of startup, with an approach to curbing healthcare costs that hadn’t crossed my desk before. |
| Garner Health, as Reber explained to me, sits somewhere between care navigation companies that steer you to certain providers, and alternative health plans taking their own swings at lowering employers’ costs — often with the help of more focused provider networks or various approaches to payments. In his words, it’s a “benefit overlay that helps employers get more care to the high performing doctors in their existing network.” |
| More simply: Garner works with employers to get employees to go to lower-cost, more efficient doctors. If an employee uses Garner, his or her out-of-pocket costs or lab services are typically covered. This all happens on the employer side: A provider doesn’t need to opt into a new network. Garner is paid a fee for its services. |
| Reber said the company is bringing competition based on value, so that healthcare acts more like other markets. Restaurants, for example, “realize that if you don't deliver great food, you go out of business,” Reber said. “What we're trying to introduce is the natural mechanism to give the information, but also the financial incentives, just like you have in restaurants and everything else, so that the doctors that are delivering great high-quality care get rewarded for that with more patient volume.” |
| Garner, care navigators and alternative health plans are all trying to do the same thing: get patients to better care at lower costs. But Garner’s approach just might work better, because it’s less disruptive. Employers don’t need to switch health plans; doctors don’t need to sign on to a value-based care contract. |
| “What we find is that most employers are not ready for that, and, candidly, those are not great product experiences,” Reber said, referring to alternative health plans, or options like ICHRA, which send employees onto the individual exchanges. But with healthcare costs rising fast, “employers now have to make a move.” |
| - Lydia |
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