Creating a New Healthcare

“It doesn’t matter what is going on in your life, nutrition is relevant.” And, at least for most Americans, getting help with their nutrition is covered by their insurance. So, why isn’t working with a dietician a normal part of every American’s care plan?

Our guest today is trying to address that question. Noah Kotlove, the CEO and Co-Founder of Berry Street, went through his own nutrition journey after spending his first thirty years clinically obese. He tried every fad diet imaginable, with great success, but like many, gained all of the weight back because of the unsustainability of so much restriction. He finally found lasting change when he met with a dietician, a step recommended by his primary care provider, and, surprisingly to him, totally covered by his insurance plan. 

That personal experience led Noah to create Berry Street, an online, DTC nutrition therapy platform that helps clients access registered dieticians while taking the guesswork out of the payment part. In this episode, Noah shares how Berry Street works, why the relationship between dietician and client is such a critical part of success, and how they leverage information, expertise, and technology to improve the customer experience and increase the likelihood of sustainable outcomes.

Noah founded Berry Street after losing 60 pounds through nutrition therapy, aiming to scale insurance-covered care through technology and change the way Americans eat. A serial entrepreneur, Noah is also the Founder of Sobrietysoft, an addiction recovery app with over 6 million users. He sees technology as a tool that allows us to get creative about outcomes over products.

“As an internist, we are always focusing on risk factors. Instead, in lifestyle medicine, we are focusing on root causes.”

We’ve heard this before – nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, toxins, community – so it should be no surprise that these are also the six pillars upon which lifestyle medicine is based. The difference is that in this discipline, these six pillars are the prescription for how we deal with chronic health conditions. Our guest today, Dr. Padmaja Patel, talks about how she implements these factors into clinical medicine so that patients leave with a precise, personalized lifestyle plan. The goal? Put chronic conditions in remission.

Padmaja Patel, MD, FACLM, DipABLM, CPE is a board-certified internist and nationally recognized physician leader specializing in Lifestyle Medicine, Whole-Person Health, and value-based care transformation. She currently serves as President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and Chief Medical Officer of Nudj Health, an ACLM-certified Lifestyle Treatment Program focused on scalable, evidence-based lifestyle interventions.

What if employers just stopped offering healthcare benefits to their employees? Could that happen? If the astronomical cost of healthcare keeps expanding, some employers will have no choice.

That’s where our guest this week comes in. Shawn Gremminger is the President and CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions. His organization works with regional coalitions of employers to help them advance health policy, leverage their collective power, and drive market change. In this episode, we talk about some examples of what that looks like in real time and how things like direct contracting may help employers continue to offer benefits while staying in business. 

Known for his wide-ranging policy expertise, and government relations experience, Shawn brings to the National Alliance a successful record of working with coalitions, employers and other healthcare purchasers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders toward the mission of achieving high-quality, affordable, equitable healthcare. He began his career as a lobbyist for the Children’s Hospital Association and has since held senior leadership roles at Families USA and America’s Essential Hospitals.

Decreasing cost. It’s the Holy Grail. The thing we all know must happen in order for healthcare to become sustainable and usable for the majority of Americans.

We know data analytics help. They help to identify those who are at the highest risk and who are the highest cost. But, what if we were able to look at those who are currently low cost and predict who might become high cost? Taking it one step further, could we then reach out to those folks and offer a clinical intervention built on relationship that might help prevent that high cost event from ever happening? That’s exactly the kind of model our guest today has built at Converging Health.

Dr. Conard operates at the intersection of clinical medicine, advanced analytics, medical group leadership, and business strategy for early and emerging companies. He began his journey as a solo practitioner, eventually growing his medical practice to over 510 clinicians over 20 years. After the practice was acquired by a hospital system, Dr. Conard became the Chief Medical Officer for a brokerage/consulting firm and led an innovation lab focused on effective health risk reduction interventions. Currently, he is the Co-Founder of Converging Health, LLC, a technology-empowered consulting and services company. Converging Health collaborates with at-risk entities such as self-insured corporations, medical groups, accountable care organizations (ACOs) taking financial risk, and insurance captives to enhance well-being, reduce costs, and improve member experiences.

When employers look at all of the point solutions that are out there to add to their list of employee benefits, the top three should be…

Primary care

Primary care

Primary care

As a family medicine physician with an extensive background in advanced primary care, our guest today knows how true this is not just in theory, but in practice. Her work these days is getting employers to see the import of this investment as well. In her role as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Marla McLaughlin partners directly with employers to identify workforce health priorities, design targeted strategies and apply real-time clinical insights to improve outcomes. 

Dr. McLaughlin has dedicated her career to expanding access to high-quality primary care, guiding patients to the right care at the right time and fostering trusted patient-provider relationships. She believes the most effective healthcare combines technology with human-centric care to improve outcomes and experiences. McLaughlin brings that perspective and passion to Castlight Health and Vera Whole Health, where she plays a pivotal role in strengthening clinical operations, improving care quality and enhancing both patient and care team experiences.