Virta Health, a startup which implements digital tools and monitoring techniques to help patients reverse type 2 diabetes, has opted for a new outcomes-based business model in which payment from insurers and employers will hinge in the success of its services.
“If we don’t deliver results, and make our patients healthier and in most cases reverse their type 2 diabetes, we don’t get paid,” Virta CEO and co-founder Sami Inkinen told STAT in a phone interview. “Literally we can enroll a patient, and get paid $0, on an individual patient level.”
Virta is among a growing number of companies, including, among others, Spark Therapeutics and Medtronic, moving toward alternative payment agreements that put a patient’s response to therapy as a deciding factor for payment.
According to a STAT report, the company’s plan is to define patient engagement by how a frequently a patient interacts with the monitoring and communication technology after 30 days. After one year, payments will revolve around patients’ A1C levels.
