National health policy expert Seema Verma is joining the Carrum Health Corporate Advisory Board. Verma will offer her expertise as the company expands its national network of COE providers and partners with self-insured employers to adopt value-based care programs to reduce healthcare spend.

“The fee-for-service payment model fails to incentivize quality and comprehensive care coordination and has led to inefficiencies in care delivery and unsustainable healthcare costs for employers and their employees,” said Verma. “Carrum Health has developed a true value-based care model delivered through high-quality Centers of Excellence across the nation to offer self-insured organizations a surgical benefit that will not only drive down healthcare spend, but also deliver higher quality of care. I am looking forward to working with the team at Carrum as they crack the code on value-based care through an innovative model starting with surgical procedures that account for a majority of employer healthcare spend.

“During Seema’s tenure with CMS she played a critical role in advocating for value based care and the role of technology in healthcare,” said Sach Jain, Carrum Health CEO and founder added. “Carrum’s focused investment in technology, including the industry’s only patient facing app for surgeries, delivers an improved patient experience that drives engagement and better health outcomes. Seema is another amazing asset on our advisory board and she will bring tremendous value to both our partners and customers. With her added expertise and experience, Carrum can expedite our growth potential and bring our solution to even more employees across the nation.”

Jonathan Bush, founder of Zus Health and, previously, Athenahealth, shared some advice for health tech startup founders in an interview with Fast Company recently. Here are some of the highlights:

• “Start with common tools—don’t reinvent the wheel. Rent the wheels and then build something unique on top of it.”
• “Show long-term value.”
• “Quickly get to the thing that no one else has and spend all your R&D, design, product time on that and rent everything else, at least until you get to break even or get to some sort of operational stability.”
• “That may be obvious advice, but during this last orgy of nearly free capital, people forgot it, and many young people started businesses not ever knowing that was a thing, and they’re about to get a massive bucket of water on their head explaining it to them.”

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Bessemer Venture Partners has closed a $3.85 billion in new capital for its twelfth flagship fund, BVP XII. The fund seeks to enhance the firm’s focus on seed and early-stage investments in companies across several areas, including healthcare. The fund will invest in companies around the world through the firm’s teams in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, Boston, London, Tel Aviv, Beijing, and Bangalore.

The firm has also expanded into private equity with its $780 million BVP Forge Fund.

“We pride ourselves on partnering with entrepreneurs to help them scale from their earliest days through IPO and beyond. BVP Forge allows us to widen our ability to support management teams seeking liquidity and wanting a hands-on partner to navigate through their next stage of growth,” said Bessemer Partner Brian Feinstein, who championed the firm’s expansion into growth buyouts.

To read more, click here.

Springboard Enterprises has announced eight companies taking part in its 2022 Digital Health Cohort. The program includes an intensive bootcamp, workshop series, with the goal of matching entrepreneurs with teams of relevant, strategic advisers. They include:

• AllergenIQ is a virtual allergy care platform focusing on prevention and providing an integrative care model to manage chronic allergic conditions.
• Lasa Health (formerly Amie Health) is targeting complex chronic conditions like endometriosis.
• Flourish Fund a b2b platform for pregnant women.
• Health Care Originals helps people with asthma and COPD live full, enriched lives.
• LunaJoy is a digital mental health clinic aimed at women across adolescence, pregnancy, postpartum, and infertility to miscarriage, menopause, and aging.
• Oral Genome is focused on dental prevention by developing a science-based point-of-care dental wellness test card.
• SoShe focuses on digital health and wellness for new and expecting parents.
• Wavely Diagnostics has smartphone-based medical diagnostics supporting virtual pediatric care.

To read more, click here.

Photo: jarmoluk, Pixabay