Transcarent Signs on Northwell, Intermountain and Rush in Latest Funding Round
Episode 1014th January 2022 • This Week Health: Newsroom • This Week Health
00:00:00 00:10:49

Transcripts

Today in health, it a little diversion from our GPM coverage. Yeah to look at the transparent $200 million series C funding round. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in health. It. I said, have channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged.

We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders. Gordian dynamics, Quill health towel, site nuance. And Canon medical. Oh. And current health, another great company. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Alright story for today in a little over a year, transparent led by former Allscripts CEO and Lavango founder, Glen Tullman has raised close to 300 million and attained a $1.6 billion.

Valuation. I see different numbers, but it's roughly 1.6 ish. Billion. What's a few, a hundred million between friends. , that's the headline, but that's not the story of this funding. Round three providers have signed on Northwell health, Intermountain healthcare. And rush medical center. And today we're going to explore.

Why that is. But before we get there, let's hit a story. That's going to give us the details around this. , I chose the med city news story because it was less fawning over.

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The actual funding round and the valuation and more about the substance. So. Here you go. , what is transparent? , the company helps self-insured employers give workers access to doctors 24 by seven.

Through the transparent app and get medical services and medications at a price. That's discounted for the employer with nothing out of pocket from the employee.

All right. So that's not the best explanation of what they do. , so let's go to the, , press release. This is what Glen Toman had to say. Health consumers want an experience, and that's what this is an experience company they can understand and feel comfortable with that provides unbiased information, trusted guidance, and easy access to high value care.

That always puts quality. First Glenn said in the statement, they want better solutions for everyday care, for medications, for surgeries, for care, that is delivered where, and when they need it, ideally at home and not always during the day. And for high quality solutions for complex care like cancer. And they went all of that in one place. And that is really true. And I think they've hit the sweet spot.

Right now they have a serious amount of demand, a serious amount of interest. And they have generated. Interest in the partnerships. And we're going to go into that in a minute. All right. So what's going on

and October trades, Karen announced it was partnering with Walmart to make care more affordable and accessible for employees of self-insured companies under the partnership employees. Are able to access everything for vision centers to testing. And tele-health offered by Walmart instead of charging companies per employee.

And for all employees insured, trans carrot makes money by getting a cut of the discount it's able to offer for healthcare services and medications. So when Walmart uses its buying power to lower the cost of medications, for example, self-insured employers get them for less and transparent gets a portion of that savings.

It goes on. Here's what the investors had to say

for years, we've been anxiously waiting for more wide-ranging reform towards value. In the healthcare industry and felt it has never been fully addressed mostly because no one entity was willing to build a better end to end the health and care experience from the ground up. Christian share investment manager for Kennebec.

Who is co-leading the series C funding round said in the statement, we see transparent as the first company to address this challenge. Head on. In a new and different way that is focused first and foremost on the consumer. ,

let's see what else we have. Okay. Another quote here from Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell. Northwell health has long been committed to doing our part, to drive health reform in our region. It's why we launched Northwell direct to deliver high quality employer health services, tied to new payment models.

Today, we're proud to be partnering with and investing in transparent as a way to accelerate our efforts on a national level. , all right, so let me tell you why, how systems are partnering with this and to do that, I am going to. , take a look over here at Matthew Holt and Jessica to Massa.

With the healthcare blog who do a WTF health, what's the future health. ,

A great resource to keep up to date on what's going on in the health tech and health investment space. , and they really captured this really well. Two paragraphs. Here you go. The investors are interesting for all of those. Who want to read into the strategic messaging here?

Late-stage Lavango investor Kennebec led the round alongside human capital and ally bridge group. Existing investors came back in and probably most surprising our hospital systems, Northwell health. Intermountain healthcare and rush medical center. Apparently other hospitals wanted to get in, but miss the chance, thanks to a tight timeline.

, Glen explains his rush and why the capital is essential to further build out trans carrots offering in light of the market opportunity. He's seeing among employers. All right. So, , evidently other health systems wanted to get in. They couldn't get through the tight timeline, as you can imagine. They're moving very fast.

The, , the internals of some, , health system investments do not move nearly as fast as this is moving. My guess is you'll see some of those straggling here, , with some announcements over the next. , that in three, six months, we'll see, see what happens.

They go on with their take on this. This is a payment model innovation play. That is basically arming those large self-insured employers. With the bargaining power and healthcare ingenuity of Glenn Toman. And what he says is the best executive leadership team he's ever assembled.

The pieces are certainly starting to come together and it looks a lot like a new age payer to me, transparency basically got the prescription drug pricing power of a PBM and its relationship with Walmart and national network of top end health systems who are either partners or have skin in the game.

Thanks to this funding round. The centers of excellence business, it bought with BridgeHealth and some coming soon care at home cancer care and behavioral health offerings. Glenn teases us about. In their interview with them, all that is offered to employers at full risk to transparent, which takes no copays or coinsurance from a members doesn't charge any per employee per month fees for their employers.

And is keeping providers happy with payment upfront.

If it's not a payer, it's only because it's better than our current definition of a payer. That might be the only reason why. All right. So that's their take on it. And by the way, I'd love their take on it. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm the only one with the right take on these things. That's a pretty accurate take on this. I like what they're saying.

My take on this is. These providers got in because it's a great investment. They've tapped into something here, employers. If you've gone to these benefit meetings, they don't go well. They're very challenging for the employers. They're very challenging for the employees. Employees struggle with gaining care. It is a.

It's very hard to figure out it's very hard to navigate. , and Glen has made it clear to me. They're not a navigation company, but they're an experience company and our experiences and good they've tapped into something here. They're knitting together, the pieces they need. The Walmart deal is very interesting.

, these partnerships with health systems, why would, why would the health system sign on,

katie page for surgeries , is kind of a big deal. , plus this is something that a lot of health systems have been trying to figure out and trying to build on their own. As you're seeing the Northwell case, Northwell direct was a, was Northwell's attempt. To go direct to employers and build something out.

Now, when you look at this, a lot of those employers have bashful programs, which means that Northwell would have had to build out this entire infrastructure for, , doing this on a national basis for the employers that are all cost country. So it requires different partnerships. And then you have the, , specific capabilities that are required to drive costs out of the system and improve the experience.

And, a Northwell may have been able to build that over time, but a company like transparent that is well-funded and well run and has a great management team is going to be able to really focus in on those, those key areas and those key areas, which Glen has talked about on several occasions.

Are, , number one, prescription costs. Number two, surgical costs. Number three. I cared home and number four complex care. So you have a company that is focusing in on four areas that are very important to delivering high quality care to employees. At a reduced cost to the employers and they're taking the risk. So I say expect Glenn to accelerate growth through acquisition. That has been their model when they were at Allscripts. And Lavango, we saw some of that as well. And I think you're going to see more of that here.

, they're also going to do some hiring and also new strategic partnerships. So expect announcements to continue to come out of transparent. All year transparent has hit a sweet spot and this team knows how to scale. , we could really be watching something special with this one. So we're going to keep an eye on it. In fact, I am interviewing Glenn Toman this afternoon.

That will air on the, , this week health conference channel next week, we're going to do a special episode on Wednesday. Before we drop our usual episode. On Friday. So I keep an eye out for that. That is going to be a good conversation. I look forward to talking to Glenn. , that's all for today. If you know someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com or wherever you listen to podcasts, apple, Google, overcast, Spotify, Stitcher.

You get the picture. We are everywhere. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Gordian dynamics, Quill health tau site nuance, 📍 Canon medical, and current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.

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