UHC — Cha

UnitedHealthcare (UHC) may be the largest health care payer in the US, but what makes the company so impactful is the people who work there. For them, UHC’s mission of helping people live healthier lives® takes on personal meaning. This is true for Steve Cain, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, who considers increasing access to health care as one of the biggest challenges of our time, and an imperative for UHC as a leader in the industry. “Access to health care, especially primary care, is the North Star of great care,” says Cain. “As a payer, it’s our job to connect the right patient with the right provider at the right time.” Like UnitedHealthcare, effective primary care is person-centric. Primary care providers (PCPs) develop personal relationships with their patients to better manage care, producing more positive outcomes than for patients without access to PCPs. Carbon Health, one of UHC’s allied health providers, has joined UnitedHealthcare in making it their mission to increase access to primary care.

“It’s hard to underestimate the importance of access,” says Myoung Cha, Chief Strategy Officer at Carbon Health. Cha oversees Carbon Health’s hybrid healthcare model, which features the immediacy of virtual care paired with over 70 brick and mortar clinics across California. “At Carbon Health, you can get care whenever you want it virtually while accessing in-person care when you need it.” Personalizing access to healthcare has long been a passion for Cha. Before joining Carbon Health, the tech innovator spent years as Apple Health’s Head of Strategic Initiatives, where he led the launch of patient-centric programs like COVID-19 exposure notifications with Google, the Apple Watch–based LumiHealth wellness program and the Heartline Study with Johnson & Johnson. Despite all his success, Cha still felt he had more to give. “In healthcare we talk about the last mile and how to reach patients where they are,” says Cha. He notes how his work before Carbon Health went a long way toward bridging that distance, yet a gap remained. The Apple Watch can tell you might have a heart issue, but it doesn’t provide a solution. “The unbelievable experience a patient gets at Carbon Health is what closes that loop.”

Today, Cha leads Carbon Health’s device-enabled home care operations, including virtual care, remote patient monitoring and home diagnostics services. When combined with in-person care options and the seamless integration of data, Carbon Health is able to offer quality healthcare on-demand. Innovations like these have made Carbon Health an attractive addition to UHC’s stable of quality providers. “Carbon Health exemplifies the kind of omnichannel approach that UnitedHealthcare sees as the future of health care,” says Cain.

In healthcare we talk about the last mile and how to reach patients where they are ... The unbelievable experience a patient gets at Carbon Health is what closes that loop.

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To maximize the effectiveness of their collaboration, Cain explains how UnitedHealthcare and Carbon Health share a mission while also sharing the risk. The two formed an Accountable Care Organization (ACO): a group of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers who come together voluntarily and give coordinated high-quality care to the patients they serve. ACOs encourage the type of quality, cost-controlled care that’s better for both patients and companies. Says Cain, “It’s a way for both UnitedHealthcare and Carbon Health to have skin in the game.” For both Cain and Cha, the collaboration between their companies came at the perfect time. Post-COVID, healthcare has seen increasing accessibility issues — especially in California, where a shortage of PCPs has led to an average wait time for primary care of 21 days. Not so at Carbon Health, which sees 90% of its urgent care patients within 24 hours. Appointments for primary care are often available within 48 hours. UnitedHealthcare’s collaboration with Carbon Health also addresses another factor that is compounding access barriers: patient data.

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Carbon Health’s Innovative Model Is Helping UnitedHealthcare Solve one of Healthcare’s Most Intractable Problems

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Facts to consider

is the degree to which social determinants impact one's health.

of Americans want to continue to use virtual healthcare for non-urgent needs.

80%

90%

of Americans are intermittent workers, meaning they are not employed in traditional full-time roles.

59M

Myoung Cha, Chief Strategy Officer, Carbon Health

“The traditional healthcare model has been struggling as its disparate stakeholders grapple with the challenge of locating a patient’s data is, leaving the patient — who should be at the system — frequently uniformed and underserved,” Cha explains. In the Carbon Health model, integrated tech through an app gives every patient access to their own medical records. Meanwhile, the translation of patient data to knowledge is mediated by Carbon Health’s expert care team. It’s win-win for both patient and provider. “These are the powerful things you can do if you wield consumer technology in the context of care delivery.” The value proposition that Carbon Health offers patients is clear: expert accessible care. It’s what attracted UnitedHealthcare to the provider. But Carbon Health offers UHC more than just providing a great patient experience for their members. Carbon Health’s model, which prioritizes primary care, has the potential of huge savings. Primary care focuses on preventative care, which keeps patients healthier while identifying health issues before a patient ends up in the ER. Primary care also helps those with chronic conditions to manage their health effectively. By focusing on a patient’s health now, primary care helps patients avoid costly interventions down the road.

is the cost of workplace illness and injury to employers per year.

$225B