Optimizing Existing Healthcare Benefits with Uber's Core Competencies: Caitlin Donovan, Global Head of Uber Health

Meg is joined by Caitlin Donovan, Global Head of Uber Health, which focuses on delivering a “better patient experience with transportation, same-day prescription, and home delivery for groceries and over-the-counter items, enhancing benefit coordination.”

Caitlin explains Uber Health’s services: transportation, prescription delivery, and grocery and over-the-counter benefits. Meg and Caitlin dive into the challenges of executing Uber Health’s vision, the importance of aligning incentives, and the critical task of understanding the healthcare ecosystem at large. Caitlin shares insights on engaging health plans and providers, as well as the future plans and innovations of Uber Health. Lastly, Caitlin discusses the key factors in successfully bringing new solutions to the healthcare market and leading well-balanced teams.

Further Reading: 

2020 product update, Uber Technologies reported that Uber Health grew 300% in two years.

2021, Uber Health and Surgo Ventures partnered with two federally qualified Washington, D.C. health centers to launch the Rides for Moms program

2023: Uber’s Revenue Up 29% as U.S. Ride-Hailing Business Improves

“How Uber Health Is Addressing The Maternal Health Crisis”

Episode Credits: 

The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare is a production of The Krinsky Company. 

Hosted by Meg Escobosa. 

Produced by Meg Escobosa, Calvin Marty, Chelsea Ho, Medina Sabic, Markala Comfort, and Wendy Nielsen.

Edited, engineered, and mixed by Calvin Marty. 

All music composed and performed by Calvin Marty. 

©2024 The Krinsky Company

Creators & Guests

Host

Meg Escobosa

Meg Escobosa has 15 years of innovation consulting experience, focusing on the unique challenges of healthcare since 2012. For The Krinsky Company, Meg leads client engagements overseeing advisory board design, creation and management. She also leads industry research, expert recruitment and trend analysis to support corporate innovation initiatives centered on the future of healthcare. Her background in innovation and strategy consulting began at IdeaScope Associates where she was involved all aspects of strategic innovation initiatives including understanding the voice of the customer, industry research and aligning the executive team to invest in promising strategic growth opportunities. Meg received her BA in Latin American Studies from Trinity College in Hartford and her MBA in sustainable management from the pioneering Master’s degree program, Presidio Graduate School. She is also on the board of a non-profit foundation focused on researching and developing technology to support a sustainable society. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two teenage daughters.

Producer

Calvin Marty

A man of many hats, Calvin Marty is a Podcast Producer, Editor, Engineer, Voice Actor, Actor, Composer, Singer/Songwriter, Musician, and Tennis Enthusiast. Calvin produces, engineers, edits, mixes, and scores The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare. Calvin is also the creator of the 2020 podcast, irRegular People, among others. Find his music under the names Calvin Marty, Billy Dubbs, Nature Show, and The Sunken Ship. Over his long career as an actor, Calvin's has voiced many Radio and TV commercials for a wide-range of companies and products and has appeared in small on-camera roles on shows such as Chicago Fire and Empire.

What is The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare?

The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare is a podcast featuring exceptional women making an impact in healthcare today. We celebrate our guests’ accomplishments, setbacks, and the lessons they've learned throughout their careers. We dig into the many healthcare issues we face today and how these innovative leaders are working to solve them. Join host Meg Escobosa in conversation with some of the many brilliant, courageous women on the front lines of the future of health.

Caitlin Donovan: There was a patient that needed a ride. This was for a chronic kidney disease patient, and it was urgent enough that it needed to happen right away. This patient lived in Kentucky, needed to cross the border into Cincinnati for service. The patient had both Medicaid and Medicare coverage. Because the patient had to cross state lines, Medicaid wouldn't cover the ride.

Because this had happened so frequently, they'd exhausted their benefit on the Medicare side. And we said to the provider, “Well, you're financially responsible for this patient. You're saying the patient needs it. If it's going to keep the patient healthier, it matches what you need to do.” And they said, “I'm worried that the health plan is going to get mad because I've spent a dollar outside of the benefit.”

They had to call an ambulance. And so what would have been an $80 ride now went to $1000. They crashed into dialysis. So not only do they have more dollars from a transportation standpoint. They're now in the hospital spending thousands and thousands of dollars. All of that was avoidable.

Meg Escobosa: Welcome to the Game-Changing Women of Healthcare, featuring exceptional women making an impact in healthcare today. Together, we dig into the many healthcare issues we face today and how these innovative leaders are working to solve them. We celebrate our guests’ accomplishments, setbacks, and the lessons they've learned throughout their careers.

I'm Meg Escobosa. Join me in conversation with some of the many brilliant and courageous women on the front lines of the future of health.

Welcome back to The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare. I'm your host, Meg Escobosa. A quick note before we get into today's episode, we are currently looking for sponsors for the podcast. If supporting and encouraging female leadership in healthcare is important to you or your organization, help us do that by becoming a sponsor of the Game-Changing Women of Healthcare, reach our engaged audience with a mention by me in future episodes, or we'll produce a short audio spot for your organization. At The Krinsky Company, we believe in female and diverse leadership in healthcare. If that's important to you too, become a sponsor of the podcast and proudly share your values with the world. Reach out to us at [e-mail] and thank you.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Game-Changing Women of Healthcare. I'm your host, Meg Escobosa. Today on the show, we have Caitlin Donovan, the global head of Uber Health. Early in her career, she worked in finance as an investor at Bain Capital and as a member of the internal consulting group Summit Partners.

Just before joining Uber Health, she was the chief operating officer for MyOrthos, an orthodontic services organization. And prior to that, Caitlin developed an interest in tackling obstacles to patient care in senior roles at specialty benefit managers in the non-emergency. medical transportation space, circulation and logistic care, now known as motive care.

She has also served as vice president of operations at CareCentrix with a focus on home health and post acute care. Welcome to the show, Caitlin.

Caitlin Donovan: Thank you so much for having me, Meg.

Meg Escobosa: We are very fortunate to get to talk to you. You guys are really doing some interesting work. And trying to solve some important gaps and care and access issues. You guys launched in 2020, is that right?

Caitlin Donovan: So actually, Uber Health has been around since 2018, but I joined the company in 2021. I'd say was able to build on some of the foundations that the team had developed to really fully integrate us more deeply into the healthcare ecosystem in a way, to your point, that we're really trying to focus on optimizing those existing funding sources, those existing benefits and closing gaps in care.

Meg Escobosa: Okay. Awesome because you guys have seriously made some growth gains in the last few years. I saw there was an article in Forbes talking about 300 percent growth from 2020 to 2022. Maybe that's the Caitlin effect. And you have, I think, a 75% increase in gross bookings from 2022 to 2023, and you guys are working with over 3000 healthcare organizations.

Caitlin Donovan: Yep, that's exactly right. You know, we've been really lucky over the past three years to identify a need in the market. Just to back up a bit, it might be helpful to explain what Uber Health is and how we achieved that growth. A lot of folks think of Uber Health as you pull out your phone, you open the Uber app, and then you use it for healthcare, but it's actually so much more than that, and in a completely separate tech stack.

The way that we're built is we're a full platform that allows for supplemental benefit access for transportation, prescription delivery, grocery, and over-the-counter benefits. Where we have a web-based, what we call the dashboard, that call centers can access provider groups can access care coordinators can access social workers can access and tap into those benefits that very often exist, but are sub-optimized and underutilized.

And then recently, we just announced our partnership with Optum financial services, so that with their flexible spending cards members that have one can actually use the Uber app whether. Uber or Uber Eats to request rides, grocery, and over-the-counter items in a way that's fully compliant with the benefits their health plan offers. So real value is taking these benefits and making them available in an omni channel way.

Meg Escobosa: Very nice. So what is your awareness campaign? Is your channel essentially providers helping their patients find out or is it the health plan?

Caitlin Donovan: That's a really good question and I think a particularly tough one to answer for the healthcare environment, right? What we've realized is healthcare is an ecosystem, and so often what breaks is when the ecosystem isn't connected. And we've been really conscious of that, and just to give a couple of examples there, often health plans offer benefits, like transportation or like grocery and over the counter goods, but it's a complete black box.

The patient doesn't know that they exist. Providers that are taking risk and trying to keep patients healthier may want to use them and not know they exist. And so one of the things that we've been doing is optimizing those existing benefits by making them more available and making it more transparent - what you can do while reducing that homework, both for the provider and the patient.

Practically, what that means is we need to talk to health plans because we need to be a part of their network. We need to be able to tap into their benefit designs and help optimize those benefit designs, but our users are not the health plans because that's the crux of the issue, is that the way they're administered prior to Uber Health was very siloed.

I have one number to call for transportation, a different one to use for grocery and OTC, and making an awareness campaign across those 3,000 providers that were embedded in it directly to members and everywhere in between, we have found has not only been really good for Uber Health's growth, but really good for the clinical outcomes that are tied to utilizing these supplemental benefits.

Meg Escobosa: And of the health plan market, are you focused on the MA plans or a certain sector, or is it kind of broad swath?

Caitlin Donovan: You know, it's a whole market. It's quite broad swath. We tend to focus where benefits exist, but are not optimized. So, for example, Medicaid has had a mandated transportation benefit since 1966. I think hopefully most folks saw that the Biden administration has encouraged state Medicaid plans to apply for 1115 waivers to offer food. For Medicare Advantage, Transportation, grocery, over-the-counter items are really regular benefits, and so we tend to find a lot of focus there, but increasingly, even on the commercial and ASO side, employers are really interested in thinking about how to serve their employees and membership that yes, maybe employed, but may act a little bit more like a Medicaid population where these benefits make a lot of sense.

Meg Escobosa: They make a difference. It's a savings, frankly, too, for the member.

Caitlin Donovan: That's exactly right. What's really interesting is by changing the way these benefits are administered without changing the underlying actuarial model, you can drive some really interesting results. We've started running some studies that demonstrate the impact of where you put the benefit offering in a patient flow, and the results are candidly unbelievable.

So we've published a white paper called Rides for Moms, where we took a Medicaid population, by definition, had access to a transportation benefit. Prior to Uber Health, the utilization was less than 10%. And when you embedded Uber Health at two federally qualified health centers that already are seeing the patients, have the patients in front of them, are doing a social risk screening, and offering that transportation, to your point earlier, to close that gap in care on the spa, utilization went from, you know, less than 10% needing a ride to 44% needed a ride at least one time and 3/4 of that population needed it for every single appointment.

And then the clinical results follow through, which I think is the most important part there. And similarly, on the food side, we've been running a program in Georgia with a Medicaid health plan in Georgia, $150 per patient per month for grocery and over-the-counter goods. Just the existence of that reward, coupled with a nutritionist as a wraparound service, means that patients have been calling us to say, “How do I use this benefit,” and getting screened for things that they otherwise wouldn't have been.

And 70% of the patients we found an additional intervention, whether clinical or social, that needed to happen. And with that offering of food, 90% have adhered, which again just speaks to how these benefits, if you don't forget about them and incorporate them into a program, can really drive results beyond just the offering of the service alone.

Meg Escobosa: To me, when I learned about Uber Health, it's sort of like, wow. Talk about core capabilities, meeting a clear need and the great merge of the two. The devil is in the details. What have you been some of those big challenges in executing? Because I think just getting through to your audience, the health plan audience, getting through to who in the provider organizations are the right people to connect with and make this happen.

Tell us some of those stories about - or what is a big challenge that you have encountered in executing this vision?

Caitlin Donovan: That's such a good question. I think something you said, I think is so key to how we operate, which is know your core capabilities. And we view that as take Uber's core capabilities and put that healthcare wrapper on it so that you can be very specific to the ecosystem and industry you're serving.

I view Uber's core capabilities as network of drivers, network of independent couriers, and candidly, our consumer brand and engagement with our customers that is so often missing from the healthcare space. And then what we've done on the Uber Health side is this is going to sound so boring, but we've really focused on data flows because that's what's been missing for supplemental benefits.

It's a black box. And so thinking about how, you know is something available? How do you request it? How do you pay for it in a really seamless way? It is sort of how we've approached that tactically. To your point, what are the challenges of how you execute that? I think it comes back to pointing out where things don't make sense and then agreeing on how to make them make sense.

So just to give a couple of examples, we were working with health plan at-risk provider together and you'd think that incentives would be aligned. The health plan has a benefit, the at-risk provider is taking risk on this patient, they are financially incentivized to do the right thing. Nevermind, hopefully we're all in healthcare because we want to do the right thing, and they have a contract with Uber Health. What happened in practice is that there was a patient that was served by this provider that needed a ride. It was a preventative visit. This was for a chronic kidney disease patient, and it was urgent enough that it needed to happen right away. This patient lived in Kentucky, needed to cross the border into Cincinnati for service, and the patient had both Medicaid and Medicare coverage.

Because the patient had to cross state lines, Medicaid wouldn't cover the ride. Because this had happened so frequently, they'd exhausted their benefit on the Medicare side. And we said to the provider, “Well, this still doesn't make sense. You're financially responsible for this patient. It's doing the right thing. You're saying the patient needs it. If it's going to keep the patient healthier, it matches what you need to do.” And they said, “You know, I'm worried that the health plan is going to get mad because I've spent a dollar outside of the benefit.” What happened was the patient did need a ride. They had to call an ambulance though.

And so what would have been an $80 ride now went to $1,000. They crashed into dialysis. So not only do they have more dollars from a transportation standpoint, they're now in the hospital spending thousands and thousands of dollars for an inpatient stay. All of that was avoidable by changing some simple administrative rules.

And so we've really taken that lesson learned on presenting those worst-case scenario stories, pulling all parties in the room together to talk about what do you do for these, you know, corner cases that candidly happen way too frequently to make sure that not only does the technology and benefit exist, but that incentives are aligned and there's a common understanding of what doing the right thing means. And that, and that's been really helpful for us, both for our growth, the membership that we serve and hopefully the industry as a whole.

Meg Escobosa: We really believe in bringing all the parties together to get aligned. Where are the gaps? What can we do to solve those gaps? Where are we not aligned? I'm curious how it's going like the, so you're dealing with state legislators or how are you accomplishing the policy shift that needs to happen? Are you also engaged with the policymakers?

Caitlin Donovan: You know, we really do engage across the board. I'd say the vast majority of our work is with MCOs and provider groups, but on the state legislature side, I think there's two ways to think about that.

One is from a transportation benefit standpoint, every state offers a transportation benefit. And I'd say two-thirds have a way to use Uber and one-third do not. And what we're finding is those that do not allow utilization of Uber in Medicaid, have extra benefit rides happening that are just more expensive for the system, candidly.

And so we've been working on how do we bring down that cost of care by borrowing lessons from other states on the transportation side. And similarly on the grocery access and food access for Medicaid. I think the concept of this is relatively new and we're so excited on some of the programs that are being filed and requested right now, and so trying to work hand-in-hand to make sure that not only Are we solving a near term and acute issue, but how do you scale that so that, so that it's sustainable?

Meg Escobosa: So describe, you've got the grocery, you've got the rides, you've got over-the-counter, and I also saw prescriptions.

Caitlin Donovan: Yes, that's right. That's absolutely right.

Meg Escobosa: That must be the latest and greatest new-

Caitlin Donovan: Oh, we actually released it in the spring of last year. And we find it is quite exciting. Again, coming back to why these benefits, it's because they're the core competencies of Uber.

You're either moving people or moving things. And there's a really interesting funding source where our particular technology we think is good for the industry. On the prescription delivery side, it's really interesting seeing where there's interest, right? So, one, for 2025, adherence is triple weighted for a STARS measure, so obviously there's an interest in making sure you can fully close the loop in how you think about driving patient adherence using those existing benefit dollars.

And second, we're finding that a lot of transportation benefits approve rides to pharmacies and grocery stores, and it is about 60% cheaper to deliver that prescription versus a two way ride. And so we're actually seeing it utilized as a piece of other benefits, which is a very interesting construct, a really thoughtful way to take cost out of the system while over serving patients.

Meg Escobosa: Awesome. What do you think is next? Do you have other ideas for how to evolve the service?

Caitlin Donovan: You know, we've been spending the past three years making sure that we have the pipes laid to have that data sharing, to allow for optimization of benefits. These have existed for a long time and really were sub-optimized.

And I think some of our results have proven that out. What I think is next is how do you then use these tools to more structurally engage patients in a way that is easy versus local provider by local provider. And just to give a couple examples, calling back to that study that I mentioned around food access and how engaged members were just knowing that they had food and then thinking about, you know, I know what I do when I'm in the back of an Uber, I have my phone out and I'm scrolling through it because I'm very bored.

How do you use that captive time or attention from patients in a way that scales really well using technology? I think you'll see a lot of that coming from us over the next several years.

Meg Escobosa: Wow, that is very exciting. I can see a lot of uses of that access to their attention and time and whether it be behavior change or insights or feedback or all kinds of potential there.

Caitlin Donovan: Exactly. Still figuring out the exact how, but I think there's, I think there's a there-there with that theme.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah, I agree. Good luck with that. That's exciting. We'll be looking for that information when it comes out.

Meg Escobosa: The purpose of our show is really to highlight innovation and of course, great women leading innovation. I'm curious what your observations and takeaways are about how to successfully bring new solutions into the healthcare ecosystem. And I know you're saying you joined Uber Health. It was launched.

You're bringing a certain skill set to the table. You've got a different perspective, a different experience level. I'm curious what you've observed. What does it take to bring a new idea into the market, especially in healthcare?

Caitlin Donovan: I think that's the key phrase, “especially in healthcare”. I think healthcare innovation happens from the inside out, not the outside in, and being fully aware of that can lead to much clearer step function and lasting change.

What I mean by that is, I've, before I joined Duper Health, I observed a lot of technology companies that had an asset, had an idea, and approached the healthcare ecosystem like they would the consumer world. You know, blank sheet of paper, this makes sense, here's how we drive adoption. Not realizing that there is a well-established, highly regulated ecosystem that can't come join you on your blank sheet of paper very easily.

So what we've tried to do is still use those ideas and core competencies, but really understand that entry point, from within, to then inch ourselves along more slowly. And I think that's worked really well, both for our company and then from how much progression we've seen around some of the standards of the way these benefits are designed, the way they're administered and the impact on patients.

Meg Escobosa: I think it's really interesting what you just shared about the idea of kind of matching the healthcare ecosystem pace, if you will, like you said, go at their pace. Has that been at cross purposes at all with the Uber kind of startup or tech company?

Caitlin Donovan: You know, we are very lucky to have a lot of support here, but I do think recognizing the environment you're in, whether it's the healthcare ecosystem and how they're going to change or how to operate within a tech company is really, really interesting.

So I think it's well-published how many millions of rides Uber does an hour a day. And that means if you release a new product, that's a consumer-facing product, you know, within a day, if it worked, if you think about the healthcare innovation, I think what's, what's the average time that's well-quoted?

It takes seven years to scale. In our case, we've done a really nice job of cutting that in half, but that still means it's 900x longer than the average product, but recognizing how you how you lean into your core competencies, lean into that pace candidly. But also match it with the realities of the industry that you're selling to, I think is quite important to be able to blend those two very necessary competencies.

Meg Escobosa: How do you understand the sort of market need and evolve it with, how do you stay in tune with the market need?

Caitlin Donovan: I thought it was a great question. I think it is really, really important to very much understand the industry. To understand exactly what your customers are literally saying and what you think they should be saying as well. When you're thinking about innovation, you don't want to be an order taker. You want to sort of guide folks with you, and the way that that works, for us and at past companies, so that it's practical and you're not wasting precious resources building to a pipe dream instead of something that'll work, is making sure that you're continuing having conversations, not just about what's now, but what's next with clear hypotheses of here's what we think you'll need.

And then when you're getting a lot of bright eyes and yeses, having those follow up conversations to stay of the three ideas we thought were next. Let's focus on this one. That's sort of how we do it. I think it's worked well for us to date and looking forward to continuing to do it, to do that.

Plus, it's really fun having conversations with folks in the industry who are much smarter than we are and seeing how we can contribute.

Meg Escobosa: That's no, it's a great point. And I think just also, you know, I know that in technology you can get down a path sort of developing a solution, very custom to a particular client's needs and their unique set up, but you have to keep making sure that you are reflecting a broader customer base so that you're not just designing a one-off solution that you're really, I mean, that's a technology kind of risk.

Caitlin Donovan: I think that's spot on. And I think the further out you can think so that you're part of the creation, not just the delivery, the more likely you are to build a scalable versus customized product.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah. Scalable is key. I have, I've read about your experience and your insights about leading and designing well-balanced teams. It was really great to see that. What have you learned about yourself? And as your responsibilities have grown and your role has shifted?

Caitlin Donovan: I think it is really, really important to know what you're bad at, to be honest, because that has to be the first person you hire to round yourself out, and I think too often people make the mistake of hiring a clone of themselves, and then you just create an echo chamber versus an environment where you're making a team and ideas better. What I know I'm bad at is I'm really bad at writing things down. I have an idea in my head. I can keep the list in my head, but that does not work for a scaled team. Someone who's more structured in the way that they organize themselves is a very nice compliment to me.

Meg Escobosa: That's so true. I agree with you. balance yourself out.

Caitlin Donovan: Exactly, exactly, and you have to be thoughtful about what perspectives you want and make sure to fill them so that you know that you don't have blind spots.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah. Very nice. You know, we care a lot about women leading innovation and getting access to leadership roles. Do you have any thoughts about how we can create more access to leadership in healthcare and in innovation?

Caitlin Donovan: Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts here. So I'm quite passionate about this topic. I've been very lucky to have very good mentors, both in the way they led teams in what they personally taught me and certainly want to pay that forward.

So the first thing. I think is important for teams in general, but especially women, just because statistically more of the lion's share of outside of work activities falls to women. And so creating an environment where getting work done is the most important thing and it's okay to take time for yourself, I think is really, really important.

So this might sound silly, but when I go on vacation, people know how to reach me, but I purposely. do not make it visible that I'm looking at or responding to emails because I really want to set the expectation that you do need time to yourself. Similarly, after hours, I love nothing more than spending time with my children and husband so I hold sacred the hours between, you know, 5:30 and bedtime. And I hope others do as well. So I think that's quite tactical.

Then there's how do you develop folks and give them opportunities to grow? For our team, everyone has a development plan. Just the expectation is that we understand not just what team members are doing today, but what they want to do tomorrow and make sure that we give them exposure to what they need to get there, just because I think a lot of careers are horizontal and are really dependent on the experience you get that rounds you out to make a conscious effort around that.

And then the last thing, it's again, not necessarily specific to women, but you more often see this in women. Very often women think that they can't do something because they haven't done it before, or haven't researched it enough, etc., and tend to have conversations around What's the worst thing that happens? You know, what, if you just said, “I'm still researching this”, but have the conversation anyway, because so often, you know, at least I learned by talking, not by reading because you miss nuances otherwise. And so I'm hoping that that has worked well for the people that I've given that advice to, but I'm sort of going my way to try and give that advice.

Meg Escobosa: Follow up with Caitlin.

Caitlin Donovan: Exactly! I want real feedback.

Meg Escobosa: No, that's really great. I'm actually curious too about those mentors that influenced you. I appreciate that you went there. How did you recognize who was going to be the right mentor for you? How did that unfold? Can you tell us that story?

Caitlin Donovan: You know, I was talking about this with someone the other day where I think, Very often people think I need to find myself a mentor and it's, it's just, it's not that specific or that formal or at least wasn't for me. I think there have been, I've been lucky to have been taken under the wing of several people where I've just gotten advice, whether because I asked for it or unsolicited, that was great advice, specific to me, what I needed, etc. So I think that's sort of one category.

Then there's another category where. I really respected someone's leadership style, and so I'll email them and ask them a question, you know, and then we'll regularly catch up on how would you think about X, Y, and Z. Thinking about what lessons you can learn from other people to take the nuggets that are consistent, but also find the style that works for you in particular, I think is really critical. And so to me, that means not just one mentor, but quite a few that you can ask a lot of questions of.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah. And I've, and you know, of course this topic comes up a lot on the show because we're interested in it, it's also just a good thing for people to be thinking about as they listen to the show, like who's in your mentor kind of advisory board, if you will, and just thinking about, you know, that there is something to be gained, but there's also something to give.

Caitlin Donovan: Yes.

Meg Escobosa: And that it's a mutual relationship. It's not just a transactional relationship. It's really more than that.

Caitlin Donovan: Completely agreed. It's almost a sort of mutual respect where typically one person has more experience than another in a particular area, but I have a lot of peers that I view as mentors now where I love brainstorming with them. There's one in particular that I'm thinking of where we joke that we complete each other's thoughts because we tend to approach problems from opposite angles, but generally get to similar answers. And so talking with her, I normally round out exactly what I need to think and hopefully she feels the same about me.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah, that's great. I love that. Good to hear. You have how many partnerships are going on with Uber Health? There are 3,000 organizations that you're engaged with. Does that actually reflect a partnership strategy or are these customers?

Caitlin Donovan: Combination of both. I do think a partnership strategy is incredibly important in healthcare in general, and especially at Uber Health.

Again, coming back to what are our core competencies and what will we never do? I think a big mistake that is often made in healthcare is the need to own everything, because then think about the poor patient and how fractured we are with point solutions. How many people would that patient need to talk to, to achieve their goal?

So we've really been taking the approach of meeting the patient where they are, if they naturally come in through Uber because they need to get to an appointment, fine, would love that, and would love to pass on the relevant information to the other channels that they need, whether that's their provider, health plan, etc.

If the opposite is true, where they have no idea who Uber is and they just need a ride, or they're talking with their case manager, let's make it not confusing for the patient and meet them at their natural entry point. I think it's really important in serving patients in a not confusing way.

Meg Escobosa: Can we talk a little bit about food? The food side of the business. So are you, how are you, I know you're getting food to patients. Is there any other element of food as medicine as a movement, any role you're playing with that?

Caitlin Donovan: Great question. So I'm quite excited about the food-is-medicine movement, in general. We've been trying to be a bit more specific on what we mean just because that term is so broad.

It's always exciting when there's that broad a term because it means people are excited about it, but then you need the specificity to really get things done. So I view this in sort of three buckets.

One is when you're solving for food insecurity, right? That is a big piece of what's going on today.

Second is when patients need help if they have a new diagnosis where they might want to avoid or avoid some foods or supplement others.

And then third, where you need really specific micronutrients. I'd say we squarely sit in buckets one and two with how our products work today. And just to give a sense of how they work today, we basically can work as a piece of a network with a health plan through an 1115 waiver to allow both patients themselves, but really importantly, their social workers, case managers, providers, you know, a call center to request things on behalf of the patient that comply with the specific rules the health plan is set. So what that means if you're solving for food insecurity, very often. A good example is that pilot in Georgia we were mentioning. There were no restrictions. Just what do you need? You know, here's $150 a month. There are other cases where plans will restrict to healthy foods, you know, where it's pantry staples and fruits and vegetables. And I think that way we can meet the designs of the program, but in a way that technology allows it to scale by connecting to Uber's national grocery network versus having to choose a partner locality by locality.

Meg Escobosa: Well, you know, you were talking about the research you were doing, is this getting moms to care. How do you track the outcome piece? Is that something that you all are playing a role in, or is it a partnership to execute the study to get that outcome data?

Caitlin Donovan: It has to be a partnership. Again, coming back to the ecosystem and what pieces each individual actor sees, you know, we'll see utilization and what folks are buying, right? So you can infer where there's need. We've been working with a wraparound telehealth nutrition support company that we're seeing what engages patients and what clinical interventions are needed as well as the follow along adherence to that intervention.

And then obviously we're working with a large network of federally qualified health centers that are tracking the downstream clinical results and still tracking that today. And I think combining those data sets allows you to really think about it - what's the right program design? What's the right population, all the way from upstream engagement through downstream clinical impact?

Meg Escobosa: The idea of care at home, obviously, really surfaced big time in hospital at home has been around for a long time, but then, of course, the pandemic really put it into turbo charge the idea of getting care at home and realizing that vision beyond getting patients to their appointments, and the food to them and their medicines.

Do you currently play a role in getting either clinicians to their patients at home or materials and goods and tools and things to patients at home?

Caitlin Donovan: On the margin, yes. To your point, our core is transportation to and from appointments, delivery of groceries, and OTC and delivery of prescriptions to the home.

We can deliver other things and, you know, have seen that a little bit. Where we do see a lot of uptake is movement of clinicians, actually. So if you think about this, especially in a city, you drive around, you look for parking, you pay for parking. You've been driving around the blocks more times. The patient doesn't know where you are.

There's actually a really nice ROI on replacing mileage reimbursement and parking reimbursement with an Uber both from a cost basis as well as from a, you know, because you don't have to drive around so much, you can anecdotally see an extra patient a day. And so we're seeing that pick up quite a bit.

Meg Escobosa: Wow, that's cool. Yeah, it's great to hear.

Caitlin Donovan: Yeah, it's really nice just seeing to your point our role in optimizing some of these benefits that have existed for years and years and years and trying to add that transparency and scalability and administration to to drive a meaningful impact.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah, it's really cool to see what you guys are researching and finding out about. Caitlin, I love also to hear where you came from, like, how did you get into healthcare, ultimately. I know that you've had your path from Bain, but what did you study and what was your early life like?

Caitlin Donovan: Oh, good question. So, I had a very boring early life, but in the best of ways, you know, we grew up as little sisters, two loving parents, nothing, nothing bad happened to boring.

I was taught to do the right thing, you know, very good, boring, very close with my family, which is really nice. And then migrating to the professional world. Oh gosh, I thought I wanted to be a chemistry major. And then after one lab realized, Oh my gosh, I'm way too extroverted to be a chemistry major. So switched to economics and had no idea what I wanted to do. My path to healthcare was a winding one, and now that I'm in it, never want to leave it, but truly just kept doing things and taking jobs where I could learn as much as possible.

So, leaving school, joined a hedge fund, because you learn a lot about a lot of industries, you know. The things I still randomly remember about satellite providers or cable providers. It's a good party trick. You know, and from there, when I ended up at Summit as an operational consultant, we were technically generalists, but I really, really ended up spending a lot of time in their healthcare tech and services companies.

To me, the combination of once I'd done something where I knew I was helping a patient at the end of the day, I couldn't look back. That combined with because the environment is so complicated and highly regulated, the problems are really interesting and you can differentiate yourself from your neighbor. So, helping people with complex problems, to me, is the dream job.

Meg Escobosa: Oh my gosh, yeah, and I love, it's one thing to talk about ideas, it's one thing to do this analysis, it's one thing to do research and have an understanding of something, but then to bring it to life is yet a whole nother. Have you had to pivot your strategy in any way? Have you ever had, have you hit a wall and had to rethink?

Caitlin Donovan: You know, I think that happens. One of the things that we've done to avoid that, you know, 180 or even 90 degree pivot and have sort of more micro pivot is by doing what we were talking about - think multiple years ahead with our customers. So, you know, your buyer, you've pitched them what they need, they've agreed, and then you're co creating what that solution looks like together.

That long-term thinking really helps you avoid Some pivots in the short term. One of the things we talk a lot about is when there's a pivot, is there solution risk, product risk, or is it timing risk? And we've been quite lucky because of that long term view and tight relationship we have with our customers that during my tenure, at least if there's been risk, it's been timing risk versus execution risk, which is, you know, we'll probably end at some point, but we've had a good run.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah, no, I mean, gosh, if you're just leveraging learnings, you know, Keeping an eye on the risks. In a micro way, which is a good approach. It sounds like it's very solid.

Caitlin Donovan: Yeah, it's been thoughtful. I think the further ahead you can get yourself in conversations with your buyers, the less risky even long term bets are.

Meg Escobosa: Do you see any fast followers trying to catch up to what you're doing?

Caitlin Donovan: You know, what's really interesting about what we're doing is we're a platform, and there's value in that platform, and I think it's really hard to become a platform in healthcare, both because of the technology requirements to execute it, and two, because of the time horizon to return.

You sort of need to believe you're already an existing player for it to work, just because of how long it takes for platforms to be adopted. So while on the individual benefit side, we do see others playing in those space, and I think especially the food space is the most nascent, so there's the most players in that space, we tend to view those companies as being potential partners versus competitors just because our real value is not the underlying service. It's the data connections. And so I'm not sure that I've seen anyone who's built an analogous product to what we have. And those that have on the edges are more complementary than competitive.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah, that's a good attitude. Anyway, you know, co-op-petition.

Caitlin Donovan: Exactly.

Meg Escobosa: That's great. Is there anything else that you guys are doing that you want to share with us?

Caitlin Donovan: Oh, no, this was such a lovely conversation. I think you tackled the sort of my approach in general and Uber Health’s approach is how do you find that root cause problem and solve for that using your core competencies versus just try to create a better mousetrap, and I think that's what we've done with taking these existing reimbursement sources and building that product that helps optimize them in a way that sort of certainly win for us, but win for plan, win for provider, win for patient.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah. The triple-

Caitlin Donovan: Triple aim!

Meg Escobosa: Triple crown! No, that's great. Amazing. Congrats and good luck. We're going to keep an eye on you guys and excited for your continued success.

Caitlin Donovan: Thank you so much. This was such a lovely conversation, truly made my day.

Meg Escobosa: Thanks for joining us for the Game Changing Women of Healthcare, a production of The Krinsky Company. Today's episode was produced by Calvin Marty, Chelsea Ho Medina Sabich, Wendy Nielsen, and me, Meg Escobosa. This podcast is engineered, edited, mixed and scored by Calvin Marty. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. It really does make a difference and share the show with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions, comments, or guest suggestions, please email us at [e-mail] and visit us on the web at www.thekrinskyco.com.

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