Sprinter Health Brings Hybrid Model to In-Home Visits

Sprinter Health recently closed a $55 million Series B financing round to bring its total funding to over $125 million. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company focuses on engaging hard-to-reach populations, using a technology-first approach paired with in-person clinical staff. Melissa Welch, M.D., M.P.H., the startup’s chief medical officer, recently spoke with Healthcare Innovation about the company’s hybrid in-person/virtual model. 

Healthcare Innovation: Before we talk about Sprinter Health, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your background. I saw from your LinkedIn profile that you've worked for lots of organizations, such as Blue Shield of California, Aetna, and Health Catalyst. Is there a common theme or through line to your career that makes Sprinter a logical place for you to be now?

Welch: When you look at my career, some people might say it's such a hodge-podge, but it's actually been deliberately curated, and it's all around how do we increase access to care for vulnerable populations, to make sure people's healthcare needs are met and in a way that they can easily access care? My career started in public health. I grew up in very underserved communities in L.A. and Compton. I spent much of high school running away from gangs, but always very driven and focused on knowing I wanted to be a doctor. My childhood shaped how I deliver care as a physician, and why I went into public health to start with. I spent a lot of my youth going to clinics in the parks in L.A. getting immunizations. I never forgot that. It was so accessible, so convenient. 

HCI: Sprinter has created a system that pairs virtual and in-home care. Can you describe how the in-home person and the virtual nurse or specialist work with the patient?

Welch: A lot of providers do telehealth visits and some do in-home visits. We found a hybrid model that we think works well for all ages of populations and needs. We'll be in 23 states by the end of the summer. We pair “Sprinters” with nurse practitioners, nurses and physicians, when needed, in a hybrid model. Typically the Sprinter has a tablet, and we can have the nurse practitioner, if necessary, connect with the patient visually, just like you are doing an e-visit with your doctor.

HCI: And the person in the home can do phlebotomy there to do blood draws?

Welch: Yes, another unique things about Sprinter is our workforce. Access to care is a challenge in this country.  We believe that we have found at least one avenue to help circumvent that and make it easier. We use licensed phlebotomists. We train them with medical assistant skills as well as community health outreach and engagement skills. We do not use a 1099 workforce. We use a W-2 workforce. There is a big difference. There's a commitment, there's a shared vision, there's heart when you're part of something bigger than just yourself, right? 

HCI: So let's say that that Sprinter goes into a home and they identify a social determinant of health need, like food insecurity. How are they enabled to address that need?

Welch: It can be different, depending upon the partner who we're working with. The patients are eligible for our services largely through their health plan. Our plan partners, in some cases, may want us to directly help that individual with finding resources in their community. We have a very sophisticated technology so that we can know what community the Sprinters are going into and look at what some of those available resources are. We can either do that directly, or the partner may have defined partners they work with, who they want us to direct patients to. We also ask patients, because the partners may not know that there's food insecurity, so we may uncover issues that we can then help the partners use to help perfect the services that the particular patient might need.

HCI: Can you talk more about the partners? Are some of these people dual-eligible patients? Are you working with Medicaid managed care organizations, other payers, or accountable care organizations?

Welch: It is a full spectrum. We're all over the country, as I mentioned earlier, and we do all types of business, so duals, Medicaid, Exchange, commercial.

HCI: Has the company done some research studies of its own efficacy — looking at ways it's been able to improve outcomes and/or cost savings for the partners?

Welch: That's certainly on the list of things that I'd like to see us delve into deeply. Our Net Promoter Scores are persistently over 90. That's huge. I have my theory that’s because of the way we engage people with the Sprinter. We go out of our way to make sure people know what to expect when people are coming into their homes, and the respect that we provide. We have a gap closure rate of 80%, which is pretty significant. I think over time, we'll be able to look back at some of that population and see if we are able to impact cost of care, which is one of the things we ultimately want to do. 

It will definitely have a big impact on cost of care if we can safely keep people out of institutions and prevent them from going back in. So transitions of care is going to be on our horizon.

HCI: Can we go back to the tell the origin story of the company? Did I read that the co-founders came out of Google and Oculus?

Welch: Yes, Google and Oculus are the history of our two founders. They were not in healthcare at all. But like many of us, they had experiences with family members where they took a step back and said this has got to be easier, right? There have got to be easier ways to do this. You asked me earlier, how did I end up here? You know, I spent much of the first part of my young life as a caretaking mom trying to have a professional life, and more recently, as a caregiver for both my Dad, who recently passed last year, and my husband, who was chronically ill for two years before he passed. On both ends of that spectrum, you learn a lot, even as a physician, about what does and doesn't work in care. And I think both of our co-founders, Max [Cohen] and Cameron [Behar], had those experiences, and really want to make a difference. You know, you can wallow in the statistics, as I call it, or you can do something different. And I think Sprinter is really doing something.

HCI: The company's received a lot of funding, including another $55 million recently. Will that help with geographic expansion or new features? 

Welch: There are two big parts to that — one is just investment in staff. We're doing over 1,000 bookings a day. That's huge, right? So you need staff to be able to do that. That’s part of that investment. And then really perfecting our technology. AI, of course, is a part of how we drive efficiency, how we think about, can we deliver things differently? Can we do care coordination and care navigation differently?

HCI: Do you think that this shift to home-based care is likely to accelerate? 

Welch: I feel like it has already happened. It's happened over the course of my 40-year career in healthcare. I worked in PACE (Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly). I think PACE is probably one of the best examples of full-circle care that’s paid for and delivered in totality. And a big part of that is care at home. The reality is that most of us are going to end up being caregivers. I'm part of that Baby Boomer population. A lot of folks either can't get into brick-and-mortar traditional healthcare, don't want to go to brick and mortar traditional healthcare, and have such complex needs that care has to be delivered at home. There is no going back. It's just not going to be practical for a big part of the population. We can play a bridge role for people who have something that may eventually require a facility stay.