Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
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Re: Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
#2Poor article. The first example they give (trying to reduce the risk of developing diabetes in an 83 yo by switching her to brown rice) is stupid, wishful thinking. Then several paragraphs which could be shortened to "they use data to improve patient outcomes". Finally towards the middle they mention some good examples of data driven interventions. Looks like a promising company if you skip most of the article :)
Re: Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
#3Our Tech blog has some more in-depth dives into what we do and how: https://technology.cloverhealth.com/
Re: Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
#4Our Tech blog has some more in-depth dives into what we do and how: https://technology.cloverhealth.com/
I skimmed through the posts but apart from the website that uses Django and marketing that needs analytics, it's not clear how you use tech?
I was hoping there would be insights or code on the "inputs/outcomes" seen on the title
I'm doing http://outcomereference.com/ so i'm esp. interested in this
Re: Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
#5I hope that we see technology and analysis used to improve outcomes rather than to screen or filter the customer pool. I worry that this will happen without protections in place.
Re: Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
#6Uncle Sam pays Clover a monthly fee for each Medicare Advantage customer the startup enrolls. The amount varies depending on where the person lives, but it averages $850 before adjusting for chronic conditions or healthy habits, the Medicare Rights Center says. Clover uses the money to pay members’ bills and generates almost all its revenue from whatever is left over after reimbursing doctors, hospitals, labs, pharmacies and other points of care. The company offers plans with no monthly premiums or ones that go as high as $225. Clover says the amount it gets from those payments and copays isn’t significant.
So it sounds like the company's biz model is to send nurses out in the field to get senior citizens to enroll in Medicare, check up on them and collect data, and sell them healthy lifestyle products (gym memberships, cooking classes, etc.). As a 23 year old I'm not sure if this is any different than what big insurance co's do for their Medicare enrollees.
The actual tech part seems to be the web portal/CMS (Django) and the storage and management of this tangential customer data that is generated with each visit:
Clover uses Python for all of our backend coding so using a pipeline orchestration tool that is itself written in Python is valuable for us. Airflow meets that requirement and it’s the tool we’ve chosen to manage all of our pipelines.
Here's the actual coverage sheet if you want to compare with your/your parent's plans: https://cdn.cloverhealth.com/filer_public/c4/a8/c4a894d0-000...
Deductibles (excluding prescription drugs) are $6,700 annually. Someone maxing out prescription charges would spend an additional $5,000 per year. I'm not sure how that compares to a traditional provider.
Tangentially: I think we've almost stretched the definition of the word "startup" into oblivion at this point. It doesn't mean anything to me anymore.
Re: Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
#7Interesting but they are not the only ones doing this. United and aetna are collecting data as well, and also employ nurses that follow patients into their homes or other settings.
The data operation is what is emphasized in this article, but it really remains to be seen how much the data can have an impact on people's overall health - preventing hospitalizations, making sure patients take their medications etc. maybe it can guide clover and let them determine where to allocate manpower - but in the end it's still the manpower that matters.
from my experience, a lot of it depends on having the right family, and perhaps community, support structure in place.
Re: Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
#8I'm very interested / concerned about what is going to happen to the insurance industry as companies get more and more data about their clients.
I'm a fairly healthy person (at least right now), and I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Re: Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
#9What we need to see is the ability for the patients to be able to own and transfer that data ( like a Google takeout ).
Re: Clover Health, an insurance startup trying to use data to keep customers healthy
#10Uncle Sam pays Clover a monthly fee for each Medicare Advantage customer the startup enrolls. The amount varies depending on where the person lives, but it averages $850 before adjusting for chronic conditions or healthy habits, the Medicare Rights Center says. Clover uses the money to pay members’ bills and generates almost all its revenue from whatever is left over after reimbursing doctors, hospitals, labs, pharma…
(I work at Clover)
As a 23 year old I'm not sure if this is any different than what big insurance co's do for their Medicare enrollees.
The difference is most insurers would say something like "OK, out of X thousand Medicare-age people, Y of them will have this expensive health problem over the next year, are we profitable when that happens?". We say "OK, how can we identify the people most at risk of that and use preventive care to head it off?" So while most insurers just take the statistics as a given and budget for it, we're trying to change the statistics.
storage and management of this tangential customer data
I think you vastly underestimate how much low-hanging fruit there is in this field, and how difficult getting and maintaining good data (so you can find the things you can do) really is :)