Ep. 18: Naama Stauber Breckler, MBA, CEO and Co-founder of Better Health. Topic: Home-based care
Kathy: Welcome to Episode 18 of the Smarter Healthcare Podcast. Our guest today is Naama Stauber Breckler, CEO and founder of Better Health. Naama talks to us today about her company, which is in the home-based care market, as well as her history of entrepreneurship and innovation in the healthcare industry. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Kathy: Thank you, Naama, for joining us on the podcast today. Could you start by talking a little bit about your background, and tell us some more about Better Health?
Naama: Yes, thanks for having me Kathy. I’m excited to be here. My career actually started in an industry quite far from healthcare. I’m from Israel originally. I started my career in the Israeli Defense Forces as a software engineer. So I spent about six years developing defense systems, being a product manager for defense systems. I got my undergrad in computer science while being there and then worked in a security start-up. So not professionally, didn’t work in healthcare, but did a lot of volunteering work and was always passionate about this space. So when I came here in 2010 to attend Stanford Graduate School of Business, I transitioned to the healthcare industry. My first company actually started out of a class we took at Stanford design school. We worked with a group of clinicians, patients, engineers, and we identified a gap in the market for people who suffer from chronic bladder issues, and need to use a catheter every time they go to the bathroom. And basically realized that catheters as they existed, now it’s about ten years ago, just haven’t been innovated in a really, really long time. People really needed a better solution. Thanks to modern medicine people lead a full kind of life, go to school, go to work, and they’re just not a great solution. So we created this really small compact catheter that people can use on the go and took this product all the way from an idea on a whiteboard to now selling, serving patients nationwide. And in the process, we, as a new manufacturer, start-up, we thought you know when Bayer has a new drug they don’t need to create a new pharmacy. We can just work with existing distributors. But when we started the process of commercializing the product we realized it’s actually really hard and it’s hard to penetrate existing distribution channels. So we had to create our own direct-to-consumer distribution to start gaining market share and in the process just talked to thousands of people who use catheters and who need to use medical supplies at home and realized there is a much bigger systematic problem to solve than just inventing a new product. And that’s how do we improve access and convenience to these critical medical supplies, and how do we close the gap that exists today between the time someone is diagnosed at a doctor’s office or post-surgery to the time that they go home and are left to their own devices to figure out how to manage - sometimes it’s a newly acquired chronic condition – how to manage life with a new medical supply that is sometimes an extension of their body. And that’s what we’re focused on at Better Health. These experiences were really kind of the seed to start Better Health. So at Better Health we’re creating a new type of provider that helps patients with navigating day-to-day life and challenges of living with a chronic condition at home. And we offer a full-stack solution, bundling education, care support, coaching, and the discovery and delivery of medical supplies.
Kathy: Can you talk a little bit more about that – how are you doing some of these things for patients?
Naama: Absolutely. So when shopping for medical supplies, part of the challenge that exists today is that your doctor would usually prescribe a general product. For example, you have urinary tension, you need to use a catheter. You went through a surgery following colitis or cancer and got an ostomy, you need to start using ostomy supplies. But one of our biggest realizations from talking to both patients and clinicians is that 8 or 9 out of 10 questions that people have, the doctor is not necessarily the best person to answer them. Because they just, there are a thousand different products that you can use within the category of catheter or ostomy or diabetes supplies. So they just don’t handle all the different ones on a day-to-day basis. And the person who can help you the most is someone who has experience with that. So it’s an experienced peer like you, or it’s a product expert who knows these products. So part of what we’re focused on at Better Health through our e-commerce platform is helping people with the discovery and the selection of the best product for them specifically. So it’s a really personalized shopping experience. You have different quizzes that you can take that based on your anatomy, specific condition, and lifestyle can recommend products that can work for you. And we have product experts as well as experienced peers who can help you to select and identify the product that would work best for you. In addition to that we also give you a lot of transparency into understanding what is in your insurance benefits? How can you shop using your insurance? And we take care of all that part, of collecting the documentation, and taking care of all the insurance billing, et cetera, and kind of taking away all that headache from people. So that when you have a chronic condition and you need to use a medical supply, we’ll hold your hand to find the exact product that will give you the best results, and help you utilize your insurance so you’ll pay the minimum possible amount for it.
Kathy: Now the last year has certainly changed the healthcare industry. How has the home-based care market changed as a result of COVID-19 and how are patients and caretakers adjusting to these changes?
Naama: Yeah, the last year has been – it’s hard to even find a word to describe what the last year has been for all of us. But it’s definitely been crazy and it had a tremendous impact, and in healthcare I would say a lot of the impact has actually been really positive in accelerating innovation, accelerating adoption, both from the patient side but also from payers, we’ve seen it in like Medicare, the adoption of telehealth, so I think a lot of good changes also came to healthcare that I hope will stay for the long term. And specifically in home-based care one obvious one is that many local retail options that previously people could have gone to – a healthcare clinic – or could have gone to a local supply store, now either these stores were closed - clinics were closed - or people just didn’t want to go out of the house and take that risk. The population that is mostly using home medical supplies is definitely skewed towards the older, so they were a higher risk groups. And I think another change is that since people were at home more, and some of them just had more time on their hands, it drove them more to do research and start looking for alternatives. So we’ve definitely seen in the past year just like an increase even in the search volumes for these different categories so people have been home, have been doing their research. If they were using something, they’re working with a supplier that didn’t work out for them, or using a product that was sub-optimal, they started taking more ownership and searching for alternatives. And I think specifically in the aging population it definitely feels like they became more web savvy this past year, whether you look at the utilization of telehealth, for the Medicare population that has spiked hundreds of percents, because they didn’t have a choice. And sometimes when you don’t have a choice that’s the mother of all innovation and of all new things that you’re able to take on yourself. And we see people also that we talk to among our members and say, “Oh I’m not very web savvy,” but actually they completed most of the onboarding process online, they select their products online, so I think they’re kind of more savvy than they used to be, and I think it’s really exciting because it just unlocks so many options for them to access care and to access different services that you can do online.
Kathy: Now you’ve talked about how you’re utilizing e-commerce. Can you talk a little bit more about how e-commerce is modernizing the home-based care sector, and do you think that e-commerce could have had this much of an impact pre-pandemic as it has had in the last year?
Naama: Yeah, so e-commerce in our industry, it hasn’t really penetrated insurance-based shopping experiences. E-commerce today revolutionized almost any classic traditional retail, but in insurance it hasn’t really. And the reason is that it’s difficult. In regular e-commerce you put your credit card and you pay. When you’re shopping for an insurance-based, it really depends on your specific insurance. So every insurance has different benefits, has different coverages. It depends on whether maybe you’re in a home health episode, maybe you’re in the hospital. So you can’t do the regular insurance in the same way. There’s so many different rules and sub rules, so it’s actually really hard to do. So as a result what happens, in the past when people would shop for these products either they would go to a local retail store or they would use mail order and they would get this catalog to their house of hundreds of pages and would kind of browse through it and find products and then pick up the phone and have a back and forth and find the right product. And what happened today, you have a few options online that basically look more like a scant catalog, just online. So at Better Health we’re really focused on giving you a shopping experience that would be similar to any other product that you would buy online, but enable you to use your insurance, and part of it is providing a lot of transparency around, once you put your insurance, what is your coverage? So what will your insurance cover, what are the – are there any kind of caveats to it, what is your deductible, what is your out-of-pocket, what will it actually cost you and what will your insurance pay, so there won’t be any surprise bills at the end of the process. And the other part is that, with these type of supplies, I mentioned earlier, it makes a huge difference on your quality of life and your health outcomes if you’re using the product that is right for you. So a big part of it is not just a marketplace that has a thousand SKUs and kind of leave you to your own element to choose, but have a more guided shopping e-commerce experience. And then in terms of the potential or how we think it changed in the past year, I think people were ready, since we talked earlier, the aging population as well is more savvy, they’re shopping on Amazon. I think people were ready but there weren’t that many alternatives. So that’s something we’re definitely focused on offering to people. And I think the potential for it is huge, just like e-commerce modernized any other retail sector, you can allow people to shop from the comfort of their home, just so important this past year, and you can allow people to discover new products, best utilize their insurance benefits, and learn more from other people’s experiences as well, without waiting on the phone for a long period of time or without going to the shop, et cetera.
Kathy: Can you talk about how you’re working with providers and insurers to provide a smooth experience for patients and physicians?
Naama: Yeah, absolutely, for the patient side, we’re really kind of doing everything behind the scenes so you wouldn’t have to worry about it. So we would collect all the documentation that we needed for the insurance piece, we would contact the insurance and kind of fight for you to get the highest coverage possible, so at the end of the day for our members it’s this black box that can be quite cumbersome to handle, and we do all that work for them. And one of our biggest value propositions, beyond the convenience of shopping, is the education and the support part, that have direct impact on our members’ health outcomes and their quality of life. And if today, a patient would, say, they’ve been prescribed one of those medical devices, they wouldn’t know how to use them, or they would face different challenges that are pretty common, can be pretty common, like bleeding or skin rash, or some kind of reaction, today they would rush to the doctor’s office or go to the ER. We help a lot of people avoid that unnecessary visit by giving them the right education and basically helping them build the skills that they need in order to manage their condition at home. So that’s something that really resonates with providers, with nurses, with physicians, taking on that education and support piece, so being there for our members, for their patients, and their day-to-day of managing their chronic condition, and saving them to the extent that’s possible, doctor’s visit, ER visit, that are not necessary, making them more confident in managing their condition at home.
Kathy: Naama, looking back on your career you’ve also founded multiple other companies. What drives your desire to innovate?
Naama: It’s a great question. I think most of all I’m just really passionate, or feel like responsibility to do something that can help others improve their life, or their quality of life. I think a lot of it is driven from earlier, before I even started my career. But maybe I can talk about one really influential person in my life growing up was my grandma. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, during the Holocaust she risked her life to save the lives of other people. And we really grew up with these stories of courage and bravery from some of the darkest times in human history. And I think for her, she always - despite the horrors that she went through - she always kept faith in humans and in people being good at their core and their potential to make an impact on the world and help and improve the lives of others. And so fortunately we live in such a different time, but there are still so many people that are neglected or underserved. I just feel honestly really fortunate to have the opportunity to work in companies that have a direct impact on people’s lives. There’s this saying that a healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one. And if I can help even one person get from one to a thousand, remove that barrier, that’s worth the journey. So throughout my career, post business school here at Stanford, I’ve had the opportunity to found multiple companies in the healthcare space and work with really amazing, talented, smart, passionate people who share this passion to innovate and to help improve other people’s lives. And I think it’s – the entrepreneurial journey is difficult but when you have a mission that you really stand behind, and when you work with people that you really respect towards that goal, it really makes the journey worthwhile. And I think…
Kathy: I was just going to say, thank you for sharing that story about your grandmother – that was very powerful and inspiring.
Naama: Thank you. I appreciate it. I think honestly one of the most rewarding things, in my previous company, CompactCath, and now with Better Health, is really just talking to our members and hearing from them what a difference we make in their lives. I’ll give you a few examples: we talk to a person who has had an ostomy for twenty years, and suffering from leakages for twenty years, which really was a big toll on their quality of life and their ability to work out, have a relationship, leave the house, and we were able to help them find a system that worked better for them and stop having leakages for the first time in twenty years. Another person hasn’t left their house for more than two hours in two years because they didn’t feel comfortable using a catheter in another person’s or a public restroom. And by helping them find a product and learn how to use it you can really have a tremendous impact on people’s health outcomes on their mental and physical state. And that’s really our goal.
Kathy: Now, let’s look ahead a little bit. What do you think the next area of healthcare is that’s ripe for innovation?
Naama: Wow, I actually have a long list for that. I think in the past year we were, some of the positive things to come out of the pandemic is this acceleration of innovation, and we’ve seen telehealth is something that became so popular, and I think it’s such a blessed progress. But probably I will say is top of the list, just given our experience in the past year, is actually being prepared for a pandemic or a global catastrophe. I think it was really amazing to see how our hospitals, our doctors, our nurses, everyone stood up, came together, brought the best of themselves and invested so much to hopefully get us to a place where soon we can see the light at the end of this tunnel. But I think that what we all learned is that something like this can happen again and that we’re not prepared enough. So I think, I hope, this would be an area that in the government and the global and the kind of hospital systems level will all work to be much more prepared and hopefully not get to a situation like the last year and a half put us in.
Kathy: Well, Naama, I really enjoyed this discussion. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Naama: Thank you for having me.
Kathy: Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Smarter Healthcare Podcast. If you’d like to learn more about Naama and her work at Better Health, you can connect with her on LinkedIn. You can follow me on Twitter @ksucich or @smarthcpodcast. Feel free to get in touch with comments or guest suggestions. To listen to more episodes, visit our website at www.smarthcpodcast.com or find us on your favorite podcast app. I’d appreciate if you would subscribe, rate, and review. Thanks for listening!
