How Carbon Health does CareOps

We the pleasure of hosting Kerem (COO) and Dr. Mandavia (CMO) from Carbon Health to discuss how they put CareOps into practice. 

As a former nurse, this discussion struck a chord. It covers the very issues around optimizing care flows that led me to leave the bedside and join Awell, where I now help care organizations implement automated, provider-friendly care flows akin to Carbon's innovative approach.

For care organizations looking to reduce clinician burnout and retain top talent, those takeaways are invaluable:

(1) Carbon's north star metric is cost per visit. At first, the idea of openly discussing financials in healthcare felt "icky". But they realized sustainable economics aren't at odds with their clinical mission of making great care accessible. As Dr. Mandavia emphasized, "We need to spend a lot more time discussing how we can lower costs in the industry. Until we do that, what are we doing?"

(2) When implementing new technology or care flows, the guiding principle is stupid simple adoption for providers. If the training requires more than a cue card, they've failed. The tech should create a "magical moment" that just works better without added hassle.

(3) At most health orgs, care teams drown in admin work, juggling between a dozen spreadsheets and clinical guidelines - a tedious "tab tango."A key Carbon differentiator is treating their integrated software suite as a member of the care team, not just another tab. As they emphasized, "Everything should maximize provider capacity to do more high-impact work."By embedding technology directly into clinical workflows, Carbon simplifies operations so their software preserves and amplifies what providers do best.

(4) The provider experience trumps all else. As Dr. Mandavia said, "If the process requires providers to work harder than before, it won't work." I've been preaching this "CareEx" gospel for ages, so it's great to see Carbon validate it.

(5) Even with excellent outcomes, Carbon's diabetes program had to shut down due to payer reimbursement complexity. As Kerem explained, "We did a wonderful job managing the care and showed improvements, but it was such a small number of patients trickling in because we didn't get steerage from payers. The improvements in patients' care wasn't enough for those paying to really care.The best product doesn't always win in healthcare.

There's much more insight packed into the full recording. I highly recommend watching the replay to learn from Carbon's approach to blending healthcare evidence with agile principles. Watch the replay here.

PS: I asked the Carbon Health panelists what books they recommend, added their picks on driving change, managing complexity, and simple cooking to our CareOps bookshelf.

Quick intro: we’re Thomas and Rik, building Awell - a low-code platform allowing care teams to design, implement and optimize care flows in days, not months. CareOps grew out of our years spent improving CareOps at innovative providers.