Issue 056
Welcome back to E&O’s Selling to Employers, the enrollment-focused digital health newsletter from Exits & Outcomes — for paying subscribers only. This newsletter digs into digital health companies that sell to self-insured employers, fully insured plans, and other payers. It’s digital health as an employee benefit.
E&O: Employers
This edition of E&O: Employers does not include a summary of a big company’s digital health-related benefits, but if you would like a quick summary of what E&O found in its analysis of some of the first 50+ BigCo stacks, check out this searchable, sortable database right here. Big news round-up because of the HLTH event. Here’s a quick list of recent announcements from companies with a digital health as a medical benefit go-to-market:
- Omada Health announced that it has served more than 1 million cumulative patients since its founding. Other all-time metrics from Omada: 25 million messages exchanged between providers and patients. More than 129 million meals logged. More than 176 million weigh-ins.
- Wal-mart announced that it would rollout no-copay virtual primary care to all of its employees and their dependents via a partnership with Included Health. The move builds on a more limited deployment that started back in 2020. More
- Lyra Health will offer its customers digital health programs from partner companies starting in January 2024. Lyra’s “benefits ecosystem” will include initial partners: Hinge Health, Progyny, and Virta Health.
- Evernorth quietly added digestive health-focused Vivante Health to its “Digital Health Formulary” reseller program in recent months. (Hat-tip to sharp-eyed Michael Pace for noting this in a recent LinkedIn post.)
- Less quietly, Evernorth announced that it had acquired some of the assets of Bright [dot] MD: “Evernorth Health Services, the pharmacy, care, and benefits solution division of The Cigna Group announced it will enhance MDLIVE’s virtual care by acquiring the technology and clinical capabilities of Bright [dot] MD, a leader in asynchronous care, triage, and health care navigation services. In addition, MDLIVE is enhancing its virtual primary care service to include health coaching for patients with chronic conditions.”
- Welldoc announced that it was adding a weight management program to its suite of digital health programs: “Welldoc’s comprehensive chronic care platform now provides multi-condition support across prediabetes, diabetes, hypertension, heart failure and weight management, along with integrated mental wellbeing and sleep apnea support. Welldoc’s weight management solution is currently available to all customers and will be launching in early 2024 with two of the leading health care companies in the US.”
- Highmark Health announced a partnership with Spring Health. “Highmark’s Mental Well-Being powered by Spring Health will offer multiple levels of support: digital capabilities for daily wellness, one-on-one care navigation, deeper clinical care through in-person or virtual therapy, medication management, and 24/7 crisis support.” The program will have a phased rollout for Highmark members starting in January 2024.
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Teladoc quietly acquired an MSK company back in 2021 before partnering with Hinge Health and Sword Health this month
Teladoc’s recent announcement that it would partner with both Hinge Health and Sword Health would have been big news a few years ago. If you’ve read other reports on this announcement, you may have noticed a few wonder why Teladoc didn’t acquire an MSK company or build a program in-house instead of partnering with Sword and Hinge.
Well, it did. Or, at least, it tried to.
Back in October 2021, about a year after Teladoc’s multi-billion dollar acquisition of Livongo — and 18 months after Omada acquired MSK company Physera — Teladoc quietly acquired the assets of a small digital health company focused on MSK named Kiio Inc. (For some reason, Kiio’s website is still online so you can read how it used to position itself here if you aren’t familiar.)
I can’t find specifics related to the financials, but here’s proof the transaction occurred (and when), a snippet from some of the paperwork related to the quiet Teladoc-Kiio deal:
The transaction was small enough that Teladoc never disclosed it in its SEC filings.
The deal included the company’s intellectual property as well as at least a handful of employees who joined Teladoc’s product teams. At the time of the transaction, Kiio’s CEO Lydia Zeller (who did not join Teladoc herself) seemed hopeful that the company’s product suite would become Teladoc’s new MSK offering. Without disclosing the buyer’s name, Zeller wrote this on LinkedIn:
“We are so excited to see the product continue to grow under its new ownership and help millions of people.”
However, Teladoc never publicly launched a revamped version of Kiio to its customers.
Prior to the Kiio deal: Starting in early 2019, Teladoc began offering an MSK program called “Teladoc Back Care” that was powered by TeleSpine (which has since rebranded as Orbit Telehealth):
“The digital video exercise program is based on more than 100 clinical studies of the treatment and management of low back pain. Through partnership with Telespine, members engage in an online, personalized, exercise-based treatment plan coupled with certified coach consultation.”
Speculation: At some point, the partnership with TeleSpine ended and Teladoc removed mentions of its back care program from its site. I think that offering had faded out by the time Teladoc made an effort to develop its own program by building on the Kiio assets. The news this month that Teladoc is partnering with Hinge Health and Sword Health is a declaration that those in-house efforts didn’t work out.
“Teladoc Health, the global leader in whole person virtual care, has entered into a reseller partnership with Hinge Health to give Teladoc clients the opportunity to secure musculoskeletal (MSK) care and support from Hinge Health through their relationship with Teladoc Health. The move helps Teladoc Health clients offer a broader range of virtual care services to their employees through simplified contracting and management.”
Preferential treatment: I’m a bit curious how Teladoc’s sales team will go about selling both Hinge and Sword programs — the company issued nearly identical press releases about the partnerships. There is no clear preferred partner like there is in Evernorth’s reseller program, for example.
Administration not re-selling? Does that mean this is more about making things easier for Teladoc customers who already have Hinge or Sword in place? Handing off administration of the programs to Teladoc’s teams to make it easier for the customer? Seems to be.
Ancient history: Can’t help but bring up that Teladoc sued Hinge Health back in April 2021 after Hinge hired away former Livongo exec Jim Pursley as its new president. The lawsuit, which focused on a non-compete agreement and trade secrets, was eventually settled out of court.
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