In the US, we spend an average of over $12,500 per person each year on healthcare -- that’s almost twice what other developed countries spend. Healthcare in the US costs a staggering $4 trillion dollars per year, almost 1/5 of our Nation’s entire economy. Yet with all this resource, our healthcare outcomes are poorer than other countries, people still can’t afford their healthcare, and our healthcare providers are burnt out.
Moreover, our healthcare is systemically unequal. People of color, lower income, and LGBTQ+ have demonstrably worse healthcare outcomes, a disparity grimly highlighted by the pandemic we’re living through now where people of color are three-times more likely to die from COVID-19.
How can this be, and how can we change it?
Nuna is tackling one of the most hardest problems in healthcare underlying the negative outcomes and disparities we see: how healthcare gets paid.
Today, hospitals only get paid when they do more-- more visits, more tests, more meds, more surgeries. Hopefully this helps patients get better, but regardless, the system gets paid. In fact, doing more is the only way to stay afloat.
But -- is this really the right set of incentives? Shouldn’t everyone get rewarded not just by doing more, but by when patients actually get better? Shouldn’t everyone have access to affordable, high quality care, and shouldn’t hospitals be rewarded when they deliver this care? And shouldn’t insurance companies get rewarded when they help ALL their patients get better?
Absolutely, yes. This concept is called Value-Based Care. In fact, healthcare as a whole has been trying to move in this direction for years, but making it all reality is deeply complex -- it is after all our healthcare. Nuna’s technology platform, our software apps, our vision, and our exceptionally talented team are collectively accelerating the healthcare system’s ability to make value-based care available to everyone.
In 2022, Nuna will power over $70Bn of healthcare payments for over 6.5mn patients. We also leverage our data science and platform to direct patients to the best, culturally-matched, and accessible care providers for them. Additionally, we make it transparent and easy for both hospitals and insurers to see how they are performing in value-based care by spotlighting the patients or areas where they need to pay extra attention so that they can provide good care to all their patients and get rewarded.
Nuna is unique - we have brought together an exceptional team of over 200 people. We are the industry’s best in healthcare data, analytics, engineering, clinicians, and value based healthcare experts. We have joined forces to create a more equitable health system for everyone.
Our dreams and ambitions to change healthcare as we know it are big. If yours are too, we want to work with you.
Open positions include:
* Sr Director of Engineering | Apps (open to VP level)
* Sr Director of Data Platform (open to VP level)
* Sr. Director of Technical Program Manager (strategy & ops)
* Staff Software Engineers - Backend / Full Stack
* Principal Software Engineers
* Engineering Manager (Tech Lead & Tech Lead Manager)
* Sr Product Designer
* Product Manager
* Technical Program Managers
* Health Data Analytics Engineers
Jobs Board: https://bit.ly/nuna-jobs
Backend Tech Stack: AWS, Clickhouse, Java, Spark, Scala, Python, Go
Web Tech Stack: Django, React, Typescript
Questions? Email: recruiting+hn@nuna.com
> our healthcare outcomes are poorer than other countries, people still can’t afford their healthcare, and our healthcare providers are burnt out.
> How can this be, and how can we change it?
This is a great problem to tackle but has many different angles at play. I just wanted to share my sentiments.
I am a lay person, but have you considered lobbying Congress to fund more residency positions? These are paid by the government, and limits the number of residents that may exist in any given year. It seems hospitals do not want to fund salaries of residents themselves (why???). This trickles back to medical school acceptance rates: schools want to maintain high "placement rates" (no. of graduates who place at a residency). Growing numbers of potential young folks wanting to be doctors cannot make it because of an artificial limit on residencies, and schools thus examine increasingly arbitrary metrics of their applicants. Doubling or tripling the number of residencies would seem very useful.
Second, cost of medical schools is so high that students and residents increasingly pursue specialties. The majority of the population first interact with a generalist, of which there are fewer.
Third, due to the above shortages, our system has created very weird solutions such as Physician Assistants, and giving them and NPs more responsibilities like an MD or DO would have, but they have less rigorous training.
Fourth, we have a merging of residency paths between DO schools and MD schools, increasing the pressure of individuals on residency slots, too. New schools cannot be created nor grown without allowing for a greater number of residency slots to be funded.
We need to open the "flood gates" holding back all the would-be doctors in our country, and allow them to enter schools. I'd be curious to see a ratio between residency slots and overall US population as a graph over time. Are they diverging? etc.
Incentives is also a great angle to work on.
Thanks for reading.