Healthcare innovation company Health2047 has spun out Zing Health, a tech-enabled Medicare Advantage plan meant for those traditionally underserved by existing healthcare plans.
Menlo Park, California-based Health2047 works to commercialize healthcare technology in partnership with the American Medical Association to make progress on issues including data interoperability, chronic disease management and value-based payments.
Zing Health will build out its presence in the Midwest and focus on elevating the patient-provider relationship to help address social barriers to care have huge impacts on patient health outcomes. The company plans to launch in Cook County with coverage starting in 2020.
Patients will have access to a local field care team that has an on-the-ground understanding of the community landscape and can collaborate on patient care with physicians and hospitals. The information gleaned from these relationships can be used on larger population health initiatives.
The company plans to embed staffers at local hospitals to help ensure patients are getting appropriate care in a timely manner.
Zing Health was co-founded by Health2047, TWG Partners Founder Dr. Eric Whitaker and Harthaven Capital Founding Partner Dr. Ken Alleyne.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Some of the benefits touted by the health plan include its ability to be customized to individual member needs, a broad over-the-counter formulary and easing patient access to care at nontraditional sites like federally qualified health centers.
“We are building a program that is affordable, accessible and repeatable anywhere in the United States,” Zing Health CEO Eric Whitaker said in a statement.
“We will co-locate care teams with community partners to collect real-time, on-the-ground data about our members and help them achieve their best health possible by ensuring they can access convenient, comprehensive care.”
Zing Health is the third spinout from Health2047, which was co-founded by the AMA and has raised more than $40 million in funding from investors. Two other companies were launched by Health2047 last year.
The first was Akiri, a San Francisco-based startup building a subscription-based data network to enable the use and transfer of health information.
First Mile Care was the second spinout and is focused on connecting people with prediabetes with health coaches and appropriate programs to change their behavior.
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