Innovating Kidney Care
Although kidney disease does not receive a lot of attention, it’s one of the deadliest and most expensive in the country. The U.S. spends more than $400 billion a year on kidney disease, a disease that 37 million Americans have but only 10% know they do. Many patients “crash” into dialysis before they are diagnosed with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Treatment approaches have seen little innovation in years. With no cure, many people with this disease are tied to hospital or facility-based dialysis for several hours, multiple times per week. To address these challenges, Strive Health delivers compassionate kidney care the way it should be done, working with healthcare insurers and hospitals to catch the disease sooner, delay its progression and enhance the lives of people living with CKD. Partnering with hospitals, nephrologists, medical groups and healthcare insurance companies, Strive Health uses a unique combination of high-touch care teams, local Kidney Heroes™, predictive analytics, seamless collaboration with local medical providers, and next-generation dialysis services to form an integrated care delivery system that supports the entire patient journey.
We’re here to methodically reinvent kidney care. We’re not here to replace clinicians; we’re here to empower them (especially our own Kidney Heroes™) and the incredible relationships they build with patients. Ultimately, we’re here to dramatically multiply their effectiveness, and that’s why we call Strive’s purpose-built technology platform the CareMultiplier™. Traditional approaches to treating kidney disease focused on managing its end stages. Shifting the focus to prevention and slowing disease progression, the CareMultiplier seamlessly integrates disparate types of partner data into a single platform. This information powers machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to generate proactive and comprehensive insights on the partner’s CKD patient population, including early identification and disease progression predictions. Strive's predictive models create real-time insights to clinicians’ workflows. One of these algorithms can predict kidney disease progression with up to 95% accuracy. These insights flow through Strive’s care management platform in real-time, informing the Kidney Heroes as they design the best care plan for each patient. Kidney Heroes embed deeply into local markets and patients’ lives to engage patients fully in their health, from managing comorbidities, to choosing a healthy diet and exercise. This is an interdisciplinary care team rooted in empathetic, whole-person care delivery. Kidney Heroes see patients in Strive Care Centers, at PCP or nephrology offices, in skilled nursing facilities, at the hospital, or in the home. The goal is to create a seamless, frictionless, and supportive care journey for patients.
Currently, healthcare is organized around acute episodes rather than management and prevention. Kidney care has traditionally been focused almost entirely on the disease end stages and in-center dialysis, missing the primary drivers of high cost and poor outcomes. Late-stage kidney disease patients typically are using 10 to 15 medications and have multiple serious, chronic comorbid conditions. Strive understands that people with kidney disease need to be engaged before their kidneys fail, but the 30-year-old, $30 billion dialysis industry was never going to disrupt itself. In Hong Kong, 79% of dialysis patients have home-based dialysis. In the U.S. that figure is 11%. Adding to these challenges, large dialysis organizations had locked down 85% of nephrologists across the country through non-compete agreements. Strive Health chose to “break all the dishes” and bring a new approach to kidney disease. Because nephrologists are critical to Strive’s success, the team worked hard to find a path around these contracts to create a willingness for nephrologists to partner with Strive in value-based care programs. In many cases Strive’s platform can be deployed in a new market in a matter of days. Once live, all patient records and machine learning models update in real-time to provide the most accurate and timely data to care teams.
Strive’s programs have shown dramatically improved care quality and up to 29% reduction in total healthcare spend. In addition, SSM Health developed a kidney care program with Strive to deliver comprehensive clinical services for CKD and end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patients that significantly improve quality of care and outcomes while lowering the total cost of care for patients. To date, the program is showing a more than 20% reduction in acute utilization for both CKD and ESKD populations and a more than 25% reduction in emergency department utilization for both CKD and ESKD populations.
Strive has an innovative approach to kidney care that focuses on prevention and results in lasting improvements to patient outcomes. Strive more than doubled its regional markets and has grown its employee base by 600% in the last year. Alphabet’s Capital G recently led Strive’s $140M Series B funding round.
