Healthcare Reimagined
On Healthcare reimagined, we speak with clinicians, entrepreneurs, and provider and payor executives who are innovating within US Healthcare.
We are sponsored by Covered Health, which is automating the most challenging and time consuming elements of appealing denied medical claims for providers. By streamlining access to diverse databases and inputs, Covered uses technology to helps RCM specialists identify denial root causes, and appeal them
Healthcare Reimagined
Yuri Sudhakar - Nudjing patients towards healthier lifestyles
Yuri Sudhakar is the CEO and founder of Nudj Health, which integrates lifestyle medicine into provider care by using a combination of human engagement and technology. Providers working with Nudj can prescribe lifestyle medicine. From there, Nudj steps in using technology, coaches, and more to help patients make the lifestyle changes that improve their physical and behavioral health.
80% of chronic disease can be reversed, treated or avoided with proper lifestyle choices. And over 40% of all premature death in this country is related to lifestyle choices.
The idea for Nudj emerged while Yuri was working on the previous company he started, which was focused on aggregating data from implantable cardiac devices, pacemakers, defibrillators, and implantable loop recorders.
As they began to engage with their patients and help them turn on these remote monitoring devices, they began to learn a lot about them- more than just the data that was coming across the device. Specifically they started to learn about the mental health of these patients - many of them were anxious, depressed, or had some type of stress in their life, and that was driving the behavioral or lifestyle choices.
The larger learning for Yuri and his team was that everything is connected. Doctors cannot just give patients material on their lifestyle choice and then treat their physical health with medications and procedures. With Nudj, providers are seeing depression (-45%), anxiety (-43%), and insomnia (-50%) scores dropping dramatically in conjunction with the physical markers that are indicators of improved health, like blood pressure scores, weight scores, lipid panel scores, etc.
Yuri blames the reimbursement structure and lack of available resources for the lack of integration of lifestyle medicine into healthcare thus far. Just because something is obvious, Yuri notes, doesn’t meant it is easy to make it operational.
One of the best things about Nudj for doctors is that there is no upfront cost - since they are the treating team, they bill for the services that they and Nudj provide, and pay Nudj for their contributions only after they themself have been paid. Yuri calls it "value as a service", and the idea is that Nudj works together with providers to create value, and when value is created, then and only then is there a financial exchange.