Portfolio Insights – WellBe

Issue 15, Oct 2024

The Leverage Health Portfolio Insights Series

Welcome to the latest edition of Leverage Health Portfolio Insights, where we continue our mission to highlight the innovators and leaders driving transformation in the healthcare industry. In this issue, we are honored to feature an exclusive interview with Jeffrey Kang, CEO at Wellbe Senior Medical, conducted by our founder, Richard Lungen.

Richard Lungen, Leverage Health

Jeff, thanks for joining us today. Tell us when you became CEO of WellBe Senior Medical, and then explain the process from then to now.

Jeffrey Kang, WellBe Senior Medical

As founder of WellBe Senior Medical, we obtained our private equity backing from Chicago Pacific Founders in late 2018. We set up the company in early 2019, and secured our first contract in July of 2020, which was with CVS Aetna.

Richard Lungen

And can you give us a little background on what you did before you started WellBe?

Jeffrey Kang

Richard, you know it’s a long history, so I’ll be brief and summarize my career into chapters.

I am a geriatrician, so let’s call it a practicing physician for 10 years. I ran a private practice, a “not-for-profit” private practice, called the Urban Medical Groups in Boston. That’s chapter one. The practice was one of the early medical groups that participated in the first round of the PACE program and Institutionalized SNP (Special Needs Plans).

Chapter two was I went to the federal government to become the first Chief Medical Officer at CMS and also was the longest serving. I started off during the Clinton administration and went into the Bush administration and, probably of interest to this audience, was responsible for developing HEDIS and the CAHPS survey, which both eventually became part of the STARS program and then the first version, V1, of HCC risk adjustment.

Chapter three was health insurance. I went to Cigna and was there for nine years as Chief Medical Officer. There I was responsible for Cigna’s Collaborative Accountable Care Organizations and its High Performance Networks.

Chapter four was in the “consumerism is going to save healthcare” era. I went to Walgreens for five years and ran all their clinics. They had 800 clinics: 400 worksite clinics, 400 in store.

Then basically, full circle back to being a value-based, at risk, provider with ChenMed as their President and now four years with WellBe.

Richard Lungen

We understand you’re on other notable industry boards Jeff. Can you give us some details about that?

Jeffrey Kang

Yes, I am on the Board of Directors of ChenMed, and also the Board of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, and then multiple advisory boards. One that you’re involved with, Richard, which is the Rosenman Institute, CHIBE, that’s UPenn’s Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, and I’m on the advisory board for the Institute of Health Policy at UC San Francisco also.

Richard Lungen

What is the gap in health care and/or problem you want to solve while running WellBe?

Jeffrey Kang

Well, you know, well, that’s a good question and I think it’s pretty simple. You know, I’m old. I’ve been around for a while. 30 years ago, the biggest health care problem has always been access, then there was the failure to be patient centric. Now there are the social determinants of health.

In answer to your question, the way I think about WellBe Senior Medical is we solve all three.

You solve the access problems by bringing the care to the patient.

About 90% of what a primary care or geriatric doctor does can be done in the home. So, that’s how we solve the access problems.

Wealso solve the patient-centric problems. I can’t think of anything more respectful and dignified than seeing a patient in their own home.

And then, the social determinants of health. You want to know what is really going on with someone? You go into their home. Then you really, fully understand the social determinants of health and now you have a shot at doing something about it.

Richard Lungen

What is WellBe’s unique approach and differentiation in the marketplace? Is it technology, certain assets, leadership?

Jeffrey Kang

Yes, it’s all of the above. From a care model perspective, it’s our in-home approach.

Almost everyone who has had an aged parent or a loved one or a friend really understands. You can kind of picture it. Someone who is 89 years old and has a hard time walking around, maybe some dementia, right? Everyone has seen that problem, and at WellBe we are trying to solve that problem.

Our care model solves that problem.

Second, from a health plan perspective, these patients are the unmanaged population. They’re the ones who are constantly in the emergency room, and the medical loss ratio is greater than 100. We’re solving that economic problem for the health plan.

We’re solving the patient problem and the health plan problem, right? And maybe what’s most important is that WellBe takes full risk on this population. That is huge for a health plan because it completely aligns incentives. In fact, all our contracts are full risk contracts.

From an operational perspective, it’s people, process, and technology; I think we have a great recruiting machine. Our providers love the model. We’re recruiting top talent, and then we have the operational processes underneath so that we can scale. All the clinicians work full time within the care model. There is no part time staff.

We have strong technology. We went from, a little over four years (July of 2020 to now), zero to 150,000 lives in eight states. And I just think about that from an operational standpoint – the way a company scales is through people, process, and technology.

And I hate to brag, but all the way, supported by the right culture. We’ve been awarded for our culture numerous times. We’ve won Modern Healthcare care top health care providers in the country last year and this year. Recently we won Newsweek’s Most Love Company and are now among the top companies in the country.

Richard Lungen

What’s in store for WellBe for the rest of 2024 and beyond with considering what is going on with government benefits and Medicare?

Jeffrey Kang

We face the same health headwinds as everyone. CMS introduced V28, the Inflation Reduction Act, and then you’re seeing the secular medical cost trends going up.

In short the answer to your question, for WellBe, translates to more disciplined growth; and then focusing on our core operations, in particular, where we do excel is the focus on medical cost control and Stars clinical quality

Richard Lungen

Thank you Jeff.