Alan Warren has served as chief technology officer and senior vice president of engineering at Oscar Health since 2016. But his background isn’t in the healthcare sector. Before joining the New York City health insurance startup, he was a vice president of engineering at Google. He has also served as co-founder and CTO of Juice Software, an enterprise software startup, and held various positions at IBM.
At the Connected Health Conference in Boston last week, Warren sat down for an interview to discuss some of Oscar’s latest developments.
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First on the agenda: the startup’s funding news. Back in March, it raised $165 million in a round led by Brian Singerman and Founders Fund. Other participants included 8VC, Verily Life Sciences, Fidelity, General Catalyst, Capital G, Khosla Ventures and Thrive Capital, among others.
In mid-August, Oscar announced that Google parent company Alphabet plans to pour $375 million into the company. Warren said there are four pieces to how Oscar will use the Alphabet money.
Since Oscar operates in the insurance world, it has to set aside a hefty chunk of the money for reserves. A large portion of the new funding will go toward those state reserves, Warren said.
Of the remaining money, some will be used to double down on Oscar’s core tech teams. Another bit will be used to help Oscar expand into the Medicare Advantage realm. “There are distinct requirements for operating in that space,” Warren said. “We’ve wanted to go there for a while but we couldn’t … without hurting the rest of our business.”
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The final way the company will use the $375 million is to refocus on the consumer experience. “The thing we’ve started and that Alphabet has been pushing us on is thinking about the number of places we can affect the member’s experience,” Warren added.
In addition to covering members in California, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Tennessee, Oscar is leveraging technology to help consumers get faster care. The startup offers 24/7 telemedicine that is free in most plans. Users can go to the Oscar app, push a button and get a call back from a doctor. The service is only audio; there’s no video at this point, but patients can send a picture if they want. Through the offering, doctors can diagnose patients and, if necessary, send a prescription to their pharmacy.
The telehealth aspect of Oscar came into play when it launched a collaboration with Cleveland Clinic. The Cleveland Clinic | Oscar health plans were initially announced in 2017. Coverage began in January 2018.
Cleveland Clinic was already using its own vendor to offer telemedicine. The health system wanted Oscar to use the same one. But Oscar wasn’t keen on the idea and proposed a different option. Members of the Cleveland Clinic | Oscar plans were given two options: use Cleveland Clinic’s telehealth model or use Oscar’s. Warren said that after the first quarter, the organizations found that the majority of patients preferred Oscar’s telehealth offering.
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