Wellstar Health System and Sharecare Partner to Deliver Innovative, Personalized Health and Wellness Platform for Team Members and Consumers
Health system and digital health company partner to re-imagine healthcare experience
Wellstar Health System, one of Georgia’s largest and most integrated healthcare systems, and Sharecare, the digital health company that helps people manage all their health in one place, announced a strategic partnership to collaborate on unique, market-leading innovations in personalized care delivery, population health, and consumer engagement.
“People are at the center of everything we do,” said Candice L. Saunders, president and CEO, Wellstar Health System. “Our partnership with Sharecare was forged to deliver an innovative experience that will engage and empower people in improving their health and wellness in unprecedented ways. Together, we are building on our vision for the healthcare system of the future that empowers the consumer.”
Wellstar will leverage Sharecare’s digital engagement platform and expertise to equip its team members with enhanced resources and health information to take control of their day-to-day well-being. Through this partnership, Wellstar also will become the first “Sharecare-enabled” health system in the country, utilizing Sharecare’s solutions to accelerate the transformation to value-based care and applying resulting insights to optimize, expand, and, ultimately, re-imagine the overall consumer healthcare experience.
Platform Supports Team Members with Wellness Resources
Sharecare delivers each person a customized digital experience where they can easily access extensive information, engagement resources, and clinically validated tools to improve their individual health and well-being, no matter where they are in their health journey. In Summer 2021, Wellstar will roll out Sharecare’s award-winning virtual care platform to its 24,000 team members to help them manage their overall physical and mental well-being and navigate related employee benefits, all in one place. In addition to the comprehensive content and resources already available through Sharecare, the two organizations will focus on innovating incentives and rewards administration that tie to engagement and outcomes and capitalize on existing Wellstar workplace well-being strategies and programs, such as employee fitness centers and biometric screening programs.
“Our team members are dedicated to caring for Georgians each and every day,” said Saunders. “That’s why it’s important that we care for them with world-class solutions that equip them to be at their best.”
Closing Gaps in Care by Enhancing and Personalizing the Consumer Experience
As the country’s first Sharecare-enabled health system, Wellstar will work with Sharecare to co-develop consumer-facing offerings – available in Georgia through Wellstar exclusively through 2023 – to achieve better health outcomes. To accomplish this, Wellstar will integrate its electronic medical record system with the Sharecare platform and utilize the digital health company’s robust portfolio of provider solutions, data management tools, and artificial intelligence capabilities to better identify and close gaps in care. Once a condition or potential care gap is identified, Wellstar providers can “prescribe” patients with additional information, digital therapeutics, and clinical programs through the secure, unified Sharecare platform, where in turn people can access those resources, monitor their progress, and, ultimately, become more engaged in their overall health and well-being.
“In addition to supporting our client partners throughout the pandemic, we have also continued to innovate and make strategic acquisitions – the collective impact of which has yielded new strategic opportunities, including accelerating our ability to bring our vision for the Sharecare-enabled health system to life,” said Jeff Arnold, founder, chairman, and CEO of Sharecare. “The key, however, was finding the right health system partner – one who shared our commitment to not only compassionate, community-driven care but also digital innovation and optimizing patient-clinician encounters through data. As a Georgian, I take pride in the fact that the ideal partner to help us realize this vision is Wellstar.”
Strategic Investment Fuels Innovation and Custom Development
To support the definition and development of the consumer-facing offerings, Wellstar has made a $10 million strategic investment in Sharecare, joining several investors who also are customers. The firms will collaborate on platform deployment, integration, and content strategy to drive value for all audiences, with a focus on the consumerization of healthcare and evolving the consumer healthcare experience. As Sharecare’s newest strategic partner, Wellstar is joining the company’s already impressive roster of investors, whose reach extends from the living room to doctors’ exam rooms and into the workplace. Select Sharecare strategic partners include hospitals, healthcare investment firms, and health plans, in particular HCA, Trinity Health, the Heritage Healthcare Innovation Fund and CareFirst; media companies Discovery Communications, Harpo Productions, and Sony Pictures Television; high-growth technology investment firms such as Claritas Capital; noted institutional investment funds such as Wellington Management; and other major reputable corporations such as Aflac Corporate Ventures, Quest Diagnostics, Wells Fargo, and Swiss Re. The partnership between Sharecare and Wellstar is the first of its kind for the two organizations.
The closing date of the strategic investment from Wellstar preceded the February 12, 2021 announcement that Sharecare has entered into a definitive merger agreement with Falcon Capital Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: FCAC), a special purpose acquisition company.
