MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sprinter Health, an on-demand mobile health and diagnostics company bringing personalized and affordable healthcare services to the home, today announced a partnership with Firefly Health, a health plan and virtual-first care innovator with a mission of delivering half-priced health care that’s twice as good, clinically and emotionally. The partnership aims to improve access to care while saving downstream costs by integrating Sprinter Health’s in-home clinical services into Firefly Health virtual primary care.
Access to quality preventive care in the US remains a significant challenge - 124 million adults have gone over a year without visiting a PCP, 34 million people have diabetes and 21% are undiagnosed, and 33 million adults are unaware they have kidney disease1. The typical primary care journey is clearly not working. Patients often wait weeks for an appointment, spend hours of time to get ~12 minutes with a doctor, and then have to navigate complex referral processes for downstream imaging and diagnostic procedures.
Firefly Health and Sprinter Health are re-imagining the patient journey to build a more proactive, patient-centric solution. Firefly Health members love the experience of engaging with a virtual PCP on their own terms, and Sprinter Health patients deeply value the convenience and accessibility of high quality care in the home. With the combined capabilities of Firefly Health and Sprinter Health, a patient is able to get lab draws, vitals checks, electrocardiograms, diabetic eye exams, and diabetic foot screenings in the comfort of their own home through Sprinter Health’s phlebotomists and nurses (“Sprinters”). Firefly Health providers order Sprinter visits at their discretion, and each visit is customized to individual patient needs. After every in-home visit, the referring Firefly Health physician will receive lab results and encounter summaries electronically for review and follow up.
“Together with Firefly Health, we are helping to condense the time it takes to gather important data that a physician needs into just minutes of a patient’s time,” said Max Cohen, CEO and Co-Founder of Sprinter Health. “The result is the convenience and affordability of telehealth combined with high-touch, in-person services needed to ensure physicians have critical information to make an accurate diagnosis and provide the best care.”
For patients living with chronic conditions like diabetes, this new model of hybrid care makes compliance with recommended screenings such as eye and foot exams or HbA1C testing as easy as ordering food delivery.
“We know that proactive, evidenced-based preventive care improves outcomes and lowers the total cost of care. Unfortunately, routine screenings are often the ones that patients skip or delay, leading to gaps in care that unravel into avoidable, costly outcomes. Our partnership with Sprinter Health aims to increase patient engagement and compliance with preventive care, strengthen the connection between our patients and providers, and improve the patient experience,” said Firefly Health Co-Founder and Chief Network Officer, Jeff Greenberg, MD.
The collaboration will kick off with Firefly patients in the Boston area. As the companies expand their joint footprint, they will continue to bring this new model of hybrid care to patients in other markets.
About Sprinter Health
Sprinter Health brings the last mile of healthcare into the modern age by sending nurses or phlebotomists ("Sprinters") into the home for quick and affordable lab draws, vitals checks, and a breadth of other diagnostics services. Online booking, reminders about fasting, text messages with estimated times of arrival, and follow-up care instructions make these healthcare interactions as easy as ordering food delivery. For more information, please visit Sprinter Health or follow on LinkedIn and Twitter.
About Firefly Health
Firefly Health is a health plan and virtual-first care innovator on a mission to offer half-priced healthcare that's twice as good, clinically and emotionally. Through their care + coverage health plan and primary care service, they deliver an unrivaled member experience that seamlessly integrates primary, behavioral, and specialty care.
By leveraging its proactive care model, hybrid network, clinical navigation, and analytics infrastructure, Firefly aims to dramatically improve accessibility and outcomes while lowering healthcare costs for businesses and their employees. Learn more at www.firefly.health.
1https://doi.org/10.2337/dc18-1380, NPR Article Feb 2020, CDC: Facts about Hypertension, CDC: High Cholesterol Facts, CDC: Diabetes and Prediabetes, American Diabetes Association, American Heart Assoc.
