So-called"value-based care" is a field ripe for startups, especially ones utilizing telemedicine and medical specialists who aren't doctors, like nurses and nutritionists.From the day he founded the diabetes-care startup Virta Health, Sami Inkinen didn’t want to make money the way most healthcare providers did, with standard fees for services.
Inkinen is clear-eyed about the stakes: “If you don’t deliver amazing outcomes every day with almost every patient, you go out of business.” Virta offers diabetes patients personalized, on-demand coaching and biomarker tracking tools via its smartphone app to help diabetic patients maintain a low-carb, ketogenic diet. A doctor supervises and weans patients off insulin and other diabetes medications when they're ready.
“The most profitable thing I can do is keep people from kidney failure, and the least profitable thing I can do is have a patient in a dialysis chair,” says Arvind Rajan, Cricket’s CEO. Still in its early days, Cricket has had only about 200 to 300 patients. By the end of 2019 Rajan expects they’ll reach about 1,700.