As Guillaume de Zwirek, CEO of WELL Health, a digital health patient communications company, is quick to point out, the healthcare industry isn’t exactly a leader when it comes to customer service. De Zwirek founded WELL in 2015 after becoming frustrated and overwhelmed by the inefficiencies of trying to communicate with the healthcare system during a health scare, with a unique mission to make healthcare #1 in customer service.
If that goal seems far-fetched, de Zwirek is determined to make sure his Santa Barbara, California-based startup leads the way. The company is gaining momentum. WELL now works with more than 400 hospitals and was awarded KLAS Research’s 2022 “Best Class” Award After receiving the same honor in 2021, for patient outreach.
WELL has raised a total of $97 million in Series A, B and C rounds to date, and the company recently confirmed plans to invest $32 million in research and development by the end of fiscal 2022, which ends on January 31, 2023. Dragoneer, it is good Partner and cloud communications platform Twilio and Lead Edge Capital contributed to its Series C round in the fourth quarter of last year, de Zwirek said, declining to disclose the amount of the round.
R&D investments will be used in part to increase the number of teams working on WELL patient communication solutions as the company adds engineers and brings in new leaders to guide innovation. That will continue to grow starting in 2021, when the startup more than doubles in size by hiring around 150 new employees.
WELL also invests R&D funds into product development. This ranges from expanding language support to translating text messages into over 100 languages, to improving scheduling workflows to make it easier to book appointments and follow-up visits.
“I’m trying to upend the status quo of customer service in healthcare and solve the communication problem that is ultimately very complex and burdensome for patients,” de Zwirek said.
Last year alone, WELL added more than 160 new customers, including Baptist Health in Kentucky and Prisma Health in South Carolina. Its clients include many other prominent health systems, such as Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
The company has been working to simplify patient communication through text, online chat and other channels. The goal is to enable patients to quickly and easily answer pressing health questions, schedule a new in-person appointment or follow-up, or go directly to a virtual medical consultation. But while the goal of simplifying patient communication may seem simple, the process of achieving it is anything but.
“Health care is probably the most complex industry in my opinion,” de Zwirek said.
That’s why what sounds simple is more complicated to deliver, he said.
Last year, WELL launched ChatAssist AI, which automates thousands of conversations between patients and providers and hands them over to staff when human intervention is needed. ChatAssist AI independently navigates complex multi-step patient communications.
Improving patient experience and engagement also means helping healthcare providers reach patients to ensure there are no gaps in recommended care.
“We are building user interfaces, analytics, integrations to support new users of the hospital, from the way you are asked to enter (during recommended care) to the way you are discharged from knee surgery and the interactions you have An extraordinary experience,” de Zwirek said.
Based on his view of the competitive landscape, potential WELL customers have three main options when it comes to handling patient communications: they can hire developers to build what they need themselves (using Twilio, for example); hire consultants to build workflows on top of existing systems (E.g sales force Marketing Cloud or Microsoft Dynamics); or purchase a purpose-built app designed to address a health system-specific patient communication problem, such as WELL.
There is certainly no shortage of interest in solutions purpose-built for patient communication. In fact, de Zwirek points out, many have been acquired over the past 18 months.This includes companies like Clara,This is Purchased by EHR ModMed February, and caring signal,This is Acquired last year by population health company Lightbeam.
In terms of where WELL is applicable, de Zwirek believes the company is not only an innovation leader, but a cost-effective solution—especially compared to health systems trying to address internal patient communication issues. Health system customers license the WELL Health platform through a SaaS model. The price depends on the size of the customer (number of providers or patient visits) and the number of provider integrations required, he said.
WELL remains independent — it’s not acquired like many of its peers — but it relies heavily on partnerships to improve the patient experience. For example, the partnership between WELL and Cerner and MEDITECH makes WELL the patient communications solution for EHR’s healthcare provider customers. According to the company, these partnerships have been instrumental in its development.
But even though WELL works with many different vendors and works behind the scenes, de Zwirek isn’t exactly trying to keep a low profile. Instead, he said, he expects WELLs to be a top consideration for hospital CIOs when communication issues arise, so they will be seen as the go-to solution to turn things around and provide a better patient experience.
Photo: designer491, Getty Images
