Ready to sell to self-insured employers?
These 40 questions will help you find out fast.
This guide covers practical issues such as
Utilization
How do you ensure high registration and usage rates among members?
ROI measurement
How do you quantify your clinical and financial ROI and contextualize it to TCOC?
Broader value proposition
Tying into employers’ broader health plan strategy including DE&I and A&R
Integration & go live
What 3rd party services do you integrate into for usability, coordination and promotion?
Business model
Who pays and how can you best capture value created?
Broker messaging strategy
Read the guide we've been providing to our own portfolio companies.
A must-read
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How budget holders prioritize decisions
We’ve interviewed leading HR benefits managers, benefits brokers and successful founders and documented findings on what works and barriers to adoption when selling to self-insured employers.
Rise above the noise
Map your value proposition to health plan priorities and determine the right monetization up front that will allow you to share in the value you are creating and lower purchaser friction.
Avoid common mistakes
A contract in hand does not equal success – map proven leverage points for how digital health vendors can influence utilization.
Why we built this resource
Too often we’ve seen founders start selling into the self-insured employer market without asking themselves the right questions on viability ahead of time
These are the 40 questions to determine if a startup is a good fit for this channel & covers –
- Determining relative priority of the value proposition
- Planning for potential barriers to adoption
- Identifying who pays with precision
Learn from self-insured employer experts
About the Authors
Robert Lord
Before joining LionBird as a Partner, Robert co-founded Protenus, a healthcare compliance analytics company from LionBird’s second fund, named the 2022 KLAS Category Leader in Patient Privacy Monitoring and Drug Diversion.
Robert is a featured thought leader in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the Baltimore Sun, among others, and was named to the Baltimore Business Journal’s “Tech 10” and Becker’s Hospital Review’s “Healthcare Entrepreneurs to Know.”
At LionBird, he serves on the board of HSES companies such Protenus, Phrase Health and Chiefy.
Peter Pronovost
Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, is a world-renowned patient safety champion, physician executive, critical care physician, prolific researcher with more than 1000 peer-reviewed publications, an innovator who has founded several technology companies, and a thought leader informing U.S. and global health policy.
Dr. Pronovost’s transformative work leveraging checklists to reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections has saved thousands of lives and earned him national acclaim.
This life-saving intervention has been implemented across the U.S., and as a result, central line-associated infections that used to kill as many people as breast or prostate cancer have been reduced by 80 percent.
Dr. Pronovost’s transformative work leveraging checklists to reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections has saved thousands of lives and earned him national acclaim. This life-saving intervention has been implemented across the U.S., and as a result, central line-associated infections that used to kill as many people as breast or prostate cancer have been reduced by 80 percent. In recognition of this innovation, his highest-profile accolades include being named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine and receiving a coveted MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”
While serving as Chief Clinical Transformation Officer at University Hospitals Health System in Cleveland and as a Professor in the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Management at Case Western Reserve University, Dr. Pronovost developed a checklist to make visible defects in value and deployed a management and accountability system to eliminate those defects. This system reduced the annual cost of care for Medicare patients by 30% over three years while improving quality. In 2022, Dr. Pronovost lead the efforts that culminated in University Hospitals winning the American Hospital Association’s Quest for Quality award, the industry’s most prestigious honor recognizing its member organizations for their commitment to quality. He was named the Veale Distinguished Chair in Leadership and Clinical Transformation in 2023.
Along with the deputy secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Dr. Pronovost co-chaired the Healthcare Quality Summit, an initiative created in response to President Donald Trump’s White House Executive Order to modernize and improve quality measures for HHS, Veterans Affairs, and Department of Defense.
Dr. Pronovost previously served as Johns Hopkins Medicine Senior Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality and was the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. He also served as the Senior Vice President for Clinical Strategy and Chief Medical Officer for UnitedHealthcare. Dr. Pronovost also serves as a member of the Presidents Council for Science and Technology Patient Safety Working Group that is producing recommendations for improving safety to President Joseph Biden.
Dr. Pronovost was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2011, to the American Academy of Nursing, and has received multiple honorary degrees. He is an advisor to the World Health Organization’s World Alliance for Patient Safety and regularly addresses the U.S. Congress on patient safety issues. He is a founder of VisICU, a tele ICU company purchased by Philips;, and Doctella, a health information platform for remote patient monitoring purchased by Masimo. He is a strategic advisor for several health care technology and venture capital companies. Today, he is known as one of the most influential executives and physician leaders in health care and one of the Top 25 innovators in health care.
About the Author
Before join–.
LionBird is a venture capital firm investing exclusively in pre-scale digital health companies.
Since its inception, the firm has invested in more than 35+ founding teams and now has over $150 million in AUM. Our focus is on helping founders lay the best foundations for their companies to scale and succeed.
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