As we head into 2020, we are providing a spectrum of innovations in healthcare that embody Icario’s mantra of “Go Boldly.” In the spirit of innovative technology, fanatical teamwork, and brilliant creativity, here are 9 revolutionary ideas that are changing the industry.
These organizations—care providers, employers, consumer goods, insurers, apps, and more—are at the forefront of healthcare, offering inspiration and demonstrating what’s possible in healthcare.
#1—DaVita Kidney Care
The Problem They’re Solving: Having the ability to receive kidney dialysis at home.
DaVita Kidney Care offers Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) and Home Hemodialysis (HHD) to patients so they can dialyze from home. The growth of at-home dialysis is now 4x the growth rate of in-center treatment options. This increase reinforces further engagement and support for appropriate home dialysis among its physician leaders.
Why It’s Revolutionary
Dialysis is a time-consuming treatment—many patients living in rural areas have to travel long distances for their treatment. To further complicate matters many patients, especially seniors, don’t always have transportation readily available. DaVita offers patients with kidney disease a choice. The ability to receive dialysis from the comfort of your home is life-changing. It allows for better control of treatment schedules, more time for themselves, their families, their jobs, and quality-of-life activities.
#2—Everlywell
The Problem They’re Solving: Allowing people to take trusted, understandable health tests in the comfort of their own home.
Everlywell provides at-home lab testing kits and digital results within days. The well-being company connects consumers to lab partners and offers more than 30 home tests, including those for STDs, fertility, chronic medical conditions, and food sensitivities. The tests promise easy-to-read responses in an average of 5 days. Test results come from CLIA-certified labs, and an independent physician reviews the outcomes. Everlywell uploads secured results to their Everlywell account, which people can access on any device.
Why It’s Revolutionary
Individuals can collect samples from home and on their own time. There’s also complete price transparency, which is needed in healthcare. The company also breaks down exactly what the test results mean, how they may affect your health, and actionable insights into how to improve or maintain your levels.
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Listen Now#3—VRI
The Problem They’re Solving: Providing care to people so they can stay independent.
The shift to home-based care makes VRI appealing to health plans that want to enhance member offerings. VRI is a leading provider of turnkey remote patient monitoring services that enable family members, caregivers, and health plans to improve patient care, prevent hospitalizations, and reduce medical costs for patients living at home. The VRI platform is device-agnostic and monitors data across more than 50 different 3rd party devices to help manage fall detection and multiple diagnoses or chronic conditions.
Why It’s Revolutionary
Technology that can reduce hospital admissions, readmissions, and length of stays is not only necessary, but also a way to fix the healthcare system. And VRI is revolutionary in scope because the offerings help more than 160,000 people across all 50 states with a chronic disease who want independence.
#4—Parsley Health
The Problem They’re Solving: Allowing more time for patients to talk with their physician.
Parsley Health members receive around 4 hours a year with medical professionals, including 5 doctor visits a year and 5 health coach visits. Parsley offers 24/7 communication with your doctor and health coach. The aim is that Parsley doctors can better diagnose and treat their patients’ issues if they have the time to get the full story. Parsley Health is classified as a primary care practice and insurers don’t recognize the membership model. After each medical visit, members can submit to insurance for out-of-network reimbursement.
Why It’s Revolutionary
Whereas most doctor visits last under 15 minutes, Parsley Health patients see their doctors for almost 4 hours each year, starting with a 75-minute session. In addition to a detailed history and physical, they’ll focus on your goals, answer questions, build your profile, and get you started with a base plan.
#5—Motley Fool
The Problem They’re Solving: Proving that employee wellness programs can work.
Wellness at Motley Fool starts with a comprehensive health PPO plan, but the company foots the bill, almost exclusively. The cost of coverage is almost completely covered by the company, and it becomes active on the employee’s hire date. They staff a full-time certified personal trainer, subsidize massages, offer an open gym at OneLife Fitness, and provide free in-house health classes. It’s clear that workplace wellness goals are imperatives for the organization.
Why It’s Revolutionary
When your wellness engagement program is around 86%, you’re inspiring your employees to make well-being a priority.
#6—Oak Street Health
The Problem They’re Solving: Helping high-risk Medicare patients receive the quality care they need.
Oak Street Health takes on full-risk contracting to provide care for Medicare patients with complex conditions. The clinical model focuses on primary care, featuring longer, more frequent visits supported by integrated care teams and technology tools. Patients are tiered according to health status and they structure weekly reviews to assess the needs of the highest-risk patients. Then, these high-risk patients are seen every 2-3 weeks on average to keep on top of their health issues.
Why It’s Revolutionary
Although it keeps its financial performance private, impressive outcomes include a 50% reduction in hospital admissions and a 35% reduction in 30-day readmission rate. If the provider can sustain these outcomes, this is truly revolutionary for a population that needs these outcomes.
#7—Humana’s Bold Goal – Healthy Days
The Problem They’re Solving: Achieving success in making communities healthier.
The use of Healthy Days is Humana’s approach to addressing the impact of social determinants and health-related social needs on a person’s life, such as food insecurity, social isolation, and loneliness. Their goal is to improve the health of the communities it serves by 20% by 2020 and beyond. The company publicly reports its results across specific conditions, social determinants of health, and populations.
Why It’s Revolutionary
It’s working. Results show that their Medicare Advantage members living in the company’s 7 Bold Goal communities have seen a 2.7% reduction in their Unhealthy Days since 2015. The first Bold Goal community, San Antonio, is halfway to its 20% healthier goal.
Humana screened 500,000 members, employees, and patients for social determinants of health in 2018. Humana worked with internal business partners, physician practices, and community organizations to screen for food insecurity and loneliness, then referred those who screened positive to community resources.
#8—Papa
The Problem They’re Solving: Solving the loneliness of seniors by connecting them with caring, energetic college students who help them with life’s necessities, increasing well-being.
Seniors receive help and companionship, while the college student earns a better hourly wage than available to them on campus. Seniors can call Papa or use the mobile app to request a college student to help around the house, teach technology, provide companionship and transportation, and more. Papa is currently available in Florida and is quickly expanding to other states. Papa offers services directly to consumers and through healthcare organizations.
Why It’s Revolutionary
The power of the intergenerational connection between a senior and a college student is inspirational. Papa is making the world a kinder place by bringing together people in need to combat loneliness and learn from each other.
#9—eTrueNorth
The Problem They’re Solving: Closing gaps in preventive care, identifying undiagnosed conditions, and helping manage chronic diseases by leveraging the access of pharmacies.
eTrueNorth is an integrated, pharmacy-based and clinical services network. Consumers can walk into one of their pharmacies and access needed vaccines, biometric data, tests, and screenings (e.g., fingerstick testing for lipids and glucose). It allows pharmacists to identify, counsel, and offer needed preventive care for their customers. eTrueNorth provides the software and infrastructure for CLIA-waived laboratories to meet all their applicable federal, state, and local regulations. They provide documentation for medical professionals to quality-control compliance. Their services also extend to employers to offer employee vouchers.
Why It’s Revolutionary
The more people who have access to cost-efficient preventive health, the closer we are to a healthier nation. eTrueNorth is not only advancing the role of pharmacies, but they are also empowering pharmacists to play a critical role in the health of their customers. Their services have taken off in just 2 years to where eTrueNorth now has a network of more than 5,500 retail pharmacies.
These are just a handful of the incredible innovations happening right now in healthcare. We can’t wait to see what other inspiring innovations the rest of the year will bring!
