Portfolio Insights – MOBE

Issue 14, Oct 2024

The Leverage Health Portfolio Insights Series

In this latest edition of Leverage Health’s CEO Interview Series, we sit down with Mike Ott, CEO of MOBĒ, to explore how the company’s unique data and analytical capabilities are transforming healthcare. Under Mike’s leadership, MOBĒ has been able to effectively engage high-utilizers of healthcare, helping them take control of their health while delivering guaranteed financial outcomes for payers. Mike shares insights on MOBĒ’s growth trajectory, including plans to double the company’s size by 2024 and 2025, and the value of collaboration with Leverage Health. Learn more about MOBĒ’s innovative approach and Mike’s vision for the future of healthcare.

Key Takeaways

Mike became CEO of MOBĒ in April 2022 after being recruited by the board to turn the company around

MOBĒ’s key differentiators are its data/analytics capabilities to identify unengaged high utilizers, ability to engage them through Health Guides, risk-based financial model, and care pathways

Under Mike’s leadership, MOBĒ has refocused on growth, retaining clients, and operational excellence

Mike expects MOBĒ to double in size in 2024 and again in 2025, approaching $100M in revenue

Collaboration with Leverage Health has been vital, with an open partnership mindset

Richard Lungen

Today we are joined by Mike Ott, CEO of MOBĒ. Thanks for being here Mike.  Tell us about when you became CEO and explain the process since you joined up until now. We would enjoy hearing not only when but why you decided to join the company.

MOBE – Mike Ott:

First, I’ll start with just chronology.

I joined the firm in April of 2022.  I just celebrated two years in the role that I’m in.

I’ve known the company, I live in Minneapolis, and I have a financial services and healthcare background as I was with United Health Group for several years. I first learned of MOBĒ through work that I had done for the Department of Defense, where I served as an advisor for the Defense Innovation Unit. Six years ago, in that capacity, we were tasked with a unique problem set in helping men and women with PTSD and behavioral issues impacted by the wars with non-clinical way with non-clinical modalities in this distributed population.  MOBE came up on our radar.

Being in Minnesota, having a loose affiliation with MOBE, and knowing the founder, I was approached as I transitioned out of financial services into United Health Group here in the Twin Cities.

Initially I was asked to join the board and over time it transitioned to becoming CEO as a consideration. The process I went through was a bit of something I did 15 years ago in a role at Piper Sandler, the investment bank, where I served as the Director of Equity Research. Equity research is about fundamentals. Understanding capabilities and opportunities, the addressable market and how can an organization can maneuver, navigate and execute in a way to grow top line, drive and expand profitability, Ultimately, with the goal of generating operating leverage and then either go public, become a core asset for another entity through a strategic transaction.

Looking at MOBE’s truly unique capabilities, and the needs of the market, it became a fairly easy decision to take the leap and lead the organization.

Richard Lungen:

How would you classify MOBE’s core assets?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

The whole model is founded on this completely unique data and analytical asset, which in turn powers both the operating model and the financial guarantor underlying the program delivery.  The data asset was originally developed through being a part of a large pharmaceutical company, Upsher-Smith, and when that company sold in 2017, we retained these capabilities.  Today we’re a firm of 250 people with an unmatched ability to guarantee and deliver financial and health results in a population that is simply inaccessible to most payers and providers.  What a wonderful, wonderful asset to develop and exploit. At that time, when I joined two years ago, we had analyzed almost two billion claims. That number is much higher today.

Richard Lungen:

What are the other key assets of MOBE?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

The other two assets really, I think about our engagement capabilities, engagement with a capital E, which is our ability to go after these people that we identify after we’ve used our suite of algorithms to identify people that are just really thrashing in the health care system. They’re overutilizing low-intensity services, they’re not engaged with care management or disease management programs by the payer, a typical insurance company, or a large, self-insured employer, with the ultimate reality that they simply do not engage, in the classical sense, in care management, disease management, or value-based behaviors and relationships. And they’re just lost, and the payers simply don’t know who they are, though they’re receiving premiums and they’re paying out benefits, they don’t know who they are or what is truly motivating them.

The other core asset is our captive reinsurer, Plymouth Guarantee.  So, once we’ve identified these folks, we are then able to take full, first-dollar risk on them, then putting our people to work on helping these members each and every day to understand and take control of their own health journey.  This financial facility is really the ultimate expression of our confidence in making real, lasting change for the MOBE member population, and it is also completely unique in the commercial insurance segment, where no risk-based solutions really exist.

Richard Lungen:

How does MOBE find and engage these individuals?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

Ultimately MOBE is a utilization-based methodology.  Yes we look at cost, we look at utilization, and actual medical condition data and co-morbidities, and it is behavioral and consumption patterns with claims data that identify the people who need our help.

After that you add years of experience focused only on these people: Their specific problems, what motivates them, and what they need to hear to believe that here is a group of people in MOBE that understand them and not only want to help but can deliver relief to them.  It is absolutely “hand to hand combat” in getting them to believe, and then in ongoing direct, personal, one-to-one interaction across our entire journey together with these folks.

Richard Lungen:

How do MOBE’s programs and pathways contribute to its mission?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

It’s kind of like how you hear people sometimes talk about the Midwest. You go from coast to coast. And hey, by the way, there’s this country in the middle of the country. In the middle are our programs and our pathways – where so much is created, and all of the value is delivered. Just as we’ve invested so much in how to identify and initially interact with our population, we’ve invested every bit as much into how to earn a real and deep relationship with each individual, and for them to trust us enough to work the customized pathway we build for them until they start seeing and feeling the results for themselves.  There is so much that goes into how to pair the individual member with the exact right MOBE Guide, which then creates the space for trust, for action, and for a real relationship.

Richard Lungen:

How does MOBE build relationships with the individuals it engages?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

This is directly through our MOBE Guides that I mentioned. Think of a coach, but in a more personally tailored context. A coach is going to direct you and tell you what to do. A guide is consultative. But through that relationship, our Guides build a trusted relationship with the individual. And that changes the individual’s relationship with their own health. That’s how we move these people.

Richard Lungen:

What were the priorities you set for MOBE and how did you implement them?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

When I joined, we had eight priorities and growth was number eight. In my mind, you focus on three core competencies because you want to be able to develop organizational “muscle memory”, and through that repetition, generate efficiency, competency, and scale. Our imperatives are growth, client retention, and operational excellence. Operational excellence has a variety of different pieces underneath that include driving product capabilities, enhancing engagement, and driving other capabilities through this engagement channel that we’ve built.

Richard Lungen:

How does MOBE’s engagement strategy differ from traditional care management programs?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

Remember, the people that we identify have never hit the radar of the payer, and if they have had a clinical trigger, they have not meaningfully engaged. In the MOBE continuum we typically engage over 30% of these people in a given year, though we take risk on the entire identified population – the subtext here being that MOBE takes on all of the engagement risk engaging these folks, and then all of a sudden, think of that value channel. 30% of this population that we take risk on, we actively engage. We influence the other 70%, but we take risk on this whole population. We actively engage 30% of this population. But we have never seen overlap with the Care Management program of more than 5% of people that MOBĒ selects to engage. Now the patient is meeting with a Guide, they’re meeting with the pharmacist, they are downloading the app, they’re consuming content. Eureka, we’ve just built a relationship with a cohort of people that a payer hasn’t identified before.

Richard Lungen:

What is the ultimate goal of MOBE’s engagement and value creation strategy?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

The goal for us is very simple: take an underserved population and give them the personal relationship, the tools, and the awareness to materially improve their health, and then deliver a guaranteed, provable savings outcome to the Payer for this entire population.

Richard Lungen:

What does MOBĒ bring to that customer that they haven’t been able to do for themselves today?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

It’s full risk financial guarantee!  Okay, that’s an important part of what we do, AND it’s not nearly everything.  What really delivers the value that we talk about is the deep understanding and relationship with this incredibly important population.  For us it all comes out in the detailed feedback that we get from these members, and the difference that their work with their MOBE Guide and pharmacist makes in reshaping their entire lives.

Richard Lungen:

What would we want the industry to know that MOBĒ is doing to help these health plans with their financial objectives, as well as member engagement, and their overall business.

MOBE – Mike Ott:

How’s MOBĒ helping its customers? We can take unnecessary spend out of this population through the engagement mechanisms we drive while not denying care. We’re filling this gap between home and the provider’s office so that people build a new relationship with their health, and they become self-healing- They literally become the first-line advocates of their own health and health journey.

Richard Lungen:

Does MOBĒ have any competition today in the market?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

Yes and no. Directly no. Our four crown jewels, algorithm and selection, the engagement engine, our programs and pathways, and the financial guarantee each could be standalone businesses. If I boil it all down, we are an engagement company that takes full risk. Nobody does that and especially in commercial lines of business. There are elements of what we do that overlap with many other firms.  There is nothing that we have found that brings all of these key elements together in the service of a specific population.

And one huge differentiator; we always start with the human first.  Yes, we have a great digital suite of capabilities, and we believe in the human first in all interactions as the way to build trust, create the space for change, and ultimately the health and financial outcomes of the entire organization.  It is truly people helping people.  I haven’t seen anything quite like us out there.

Richard Lungen:

What’s ahead for MOBĒ with your leadership going into 2025 and beyond?

MOBE – Mike Ott:

MOBE has such a solid foundation.  Now it’s about broadening the base to help more people every day.

What’s ahead is significant growth. I expect us to double the size of the business in 2025 after doubling it in 2024 and that comes through retaining the relationships that we have with our customers, expanding those relationships into different lines of business, and then through delivering. I don’t refer to this as a core asset, but I think customer care and client service need to be a differentiator in the marketplace.

Richard Lungen:

MOBĒ brings a unique set of assets to the table in their single umbrella.

The market leading member level algorithm, the proprietary risk-based chassis to take full risk in a proprietary vehicle, as well as a nationwide network of full-time Guides that work with its identified members on a one-to-one basis in order to reduce the total cost of care in a total whole-being model. And that’s what the health plans and the large employers need in today’s health environment.

MOBE – Mike Ott:

Our Guides are W-2 employees also, which we’re often asked about. “Are these contractors?” No. Everybody’s W-2 and that’s done with great intention because it ensures a service level and allows us to have the full mind’s attention from the folks that are delivering services for our participants.

Lastly, I will proudly comment that any firm that’s in Leverage Health’s, portfolio, or being considered to become part of that portfolio should do it, but should do it under the sense of you have to be open, you have to be willing to share, you have to think of your relationship and partnership with Leverage as truly a partnership.

The process of me transitioning to the role that I’m in, included establishing a renewed working relationship with Leverage. Between Richard, Charlie, myself, Mark Stryker, we all saw that the intent and earnestness behind both parties was really strong.

We’ve got to give each other the benefit of the doubt and offer each other a little bit of grace. I would encourage any company that is considering partnering with Leverage, especially startups with novel technology capabilities or care management renderings into the payer space, to do it because they’re going to find a committed 24-7 partner.