Unite Us Buys NowPow, Consolidating SDOH Tech Space
Saying they are building the operating system for social care to improve health, executives of New York-based Unite Us, the largest vendor in the space connecting health and social care services, has announced the acquisition of competitor NowPow, the Chicago-based referral platform.
The companies said the combination would create the nation’s largest integrated health and social care network connecting people to the resources they need -- from food and housing assistance to counseling, caregiver support and more. Terms of the deal were not announced.
With diverse experiences addressing inequities at the structural, community and institutional levels, the companies said they are teaming up to eliminate fragmentation between health and social care providers and allow communities to better coordinate and support individuals seeking services.
“We are thrilled to embark on a joint vision with the NowPow team and combine NowPow’s high-quality, whole-person approach and research-validated condition-based algorithms with Unite Us’ proven end-to-end solutions and scale,” said Dan Brillman, Unite Us CEO, in a statement, adding that Unite Us has admired the NowPow model from afar for several years. “This was the right time for this combination, which will drive outsized impact for the country."
NowPow has 140 employees, with 122 located inChicago. All staff will be joining the Unite Us team, bringing Unite Us’ headcount to over 800. NowPow will remain independent until the end of 2021 and then transition into a fully integrated offering under the Unite Us brand.|
This announcement follows on another acquisition by Unite Us. It recently bought analytics company Carrot Health. Unite Us and NowPow will add Carrot’s data-driven solutions to their community-based technology that predicts needs, enrolls clients in services, measures impact, and pays for community-based services through its nationwide network.
Carrot Health says it has the nation's largest consumer and health data set, which powers more than 500 proprietary predictive models focused on improving health behaviors and outcomes. This will be added to Unite Us' national care coordination platform, prediction and enrollment capabilities, and payments products to reimburse community-based organizations for their impact.
Unite Us has developed partnerships with states, nonprofit organizations and large health systems including Kaiser Permanente. For instance, Unite Louisiana uses the Unite Us technology platform to connect clinicians and social service providers to serve the health and social needs within communities and parishes statewide.
NowPow has done more than 1 million screenings and millions of referrals to date. “At a time when communities and policy makers are rightfully demanding a faster pace and greater interoperability, we are bringing our complementary strengths together to achieve deeper impact — both now and far into the future,” said Rachel Kohler, CEO of NowPow, in a statement.
Unite Us has said the SDOH tech movement must move beyond nationwide lists of resources and the unmet promises of closed-loop referrals with disconnected technologies, and siloed initiatives. The shift to value-based care models to reduce unnecessary healthcare utilization requires a close-knit network of accountable community-based organizations creating a new type of care team, fulfilling last-mile services, it says. This creates a 360-degree view of a client journey, and brings public and private sectors together to analyze and invest in the greatest impacts on health and communities.
