<table style="border:1px solid #adadad; background-color: #F3F1EC; color: #666666; padding:8px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; line-height:16px; margin-bottom:6px;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">Health Tech | Fierce Healthcare</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/look-inside-highmark-and-spring-healths-mental-well-being-partnership" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Inside Highmark and Spring's mental well-being partnership</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 21st 2026, 13:45</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="5.78393351800554" morss_score="77.41551246537396">
<p>Just over two years ago, Highmark joined forces with Spring Health to launch a new mental well-being platform that made it far easier for members to access critical services.</p>
<p>Now, the partners are offering a look at how that program has worked for members. In <a href="https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.25.0192">a paper</a> published last month, researchers at Highmark reported that patients waited less than two days on average in 2025 to access an appointment.</p>
<p>Spring's platform is embedded directly into Highmark's member app, and that integration was a key part of what made the program work, according to the analysis. Members can easily find mental well-being tools and complete a self-assessment upon connecting for the first time, which allows Spring to build a personalized approach.</p>
<p>The program includes an array of services tailored to patient's needs, ranging from daily wellness activities to behavioral therapy and crisis support, offered both virtually and in-person. Through the model, the analysis found that individuals with moderate-to-severe depression achieved remission in an average of four appointments.</p>
<p>For those with moderate-to-severe anxiety, remission was achieved in five visits on average, according to the paper.</p>
<p>Doug Henry, Ph.D., medical director for enterprise behavioral health at Highmark, told Fierce Healthcare in an interview that when he joined the team a few years before COVID-19, he was given a directive to ramp up hiring of psychiatrists and psychologists as need grew.</p>
<p>In that effort, the insurer was able to grow services by 400%, but it still wasn't enough to meet demand, he said. And the pandemic accelerated the need for mental health services even further, which led the team to realize a new approach may be necessary to address access.</p>
<p>"We knew as an enterprise that we had to do something major to increase our access," Henry said. "And that's when we began a process of looking through all of these different companies that aggregate networks of providers."</p>
<p>Following a two-year search, the Highmark team identified Spring as the right partner after finding the quality results impressive. And once the digital integration was worked out, the program officially launched in January 2024, with about 51,000 people enrolling in the platform on its first year.</p>
<p>Adam Chekroud, Ph.D., president and co-founder of Spring Health, said the mental well-being offering is an example of an insurer truly leaning in on mental health, as many patients may struggle with accessing in-network providers or in finding a provider that takes insurance at all.</p>
<p>He said that the average wait for a behavioral health appointment is three to four weeks nationwide, and getting patients into appointments much faster helps circumvent stigmas and other barriers that may prevent people from seeking help.</p>
<p>"Highmark is leaning in, where a lot of other payers are leaning out," Chekroud said.</p>
<p>One of the standout statistics from the study is that, of the 51,000 individuals who enrolled in the program in 2024, 78.5% were connecting with behavioral health services for the first time.</p>
<p>Henry said that it's highly likely that these individuals had tried to reach out or seek mental healthcare before, but were unable to find a provider or were unable to afford the services. </p>
<p>"That data point was astonishing to me, and it makes me incredibly happy, because it shows to me, that we have lowered the friction beneath the point at which many people had tried previously and given up previously in finding mental health supports," Henry said.</p>
<p>As the partners look ahead to the future of the program, both Henry and Chekroud said that artificial intelligence will be a key tool to continue building out the personalization of the platform. </p>
<p>Chekroud said that it will also provide a valuable assist in between visits. For example, AI can generate a summary of the visit that offers key lessons that the patient can refer back to between sessions with their therapist.</p>
<p>It could also identify when a patient hasn't been working on goals or key activities, and offer nudges to engage, he said.</p>
<p>"The example that I often give is, if you wanted to get jacked, you wouldn't just go to the gym once every two weeks," Chekroud said. "It requires a lot more than just that. And I think that AI's ability is to fill in the gaps between those sessions to make it easier for you to overall hit your goals."</p>
</div></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/ecri-spins-out-healthcare-supply-chain-division-staritas-backed-pe-firm-accel-kkr" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">ECRI spins out supply chain intelligence division into Staritas</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 21st 2026, 13:45</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="5.711884753901561" morss_score="67.50822621731619">
<p>ECRI, a nonprofit healthcare quality and safety organization, spun out its spend management and recall management solutions an independent company backed by a strategic growth investment from Accel-KKR.</p>
<p>The new company, called <a href="https://staritas.com/">Staritas</a>, will focus on providing healthcare supply chain intelligence supported by the technology-focused private equity, the company announced Tuesday. Accel-KKR specializes in software and tech-enabled businesses.</p>
<p>As a separate company, Staritas will focus on the development and delivery of artificial intelligence-driven solutions to enable healthcare organizations to manage the growing complexity of supply chains, executives said in a press release. </p>
<p>ECRI, which has been operating for 60 years, is now focused exclusively on creating resilient and safe healthcare systems and assessing technologies used in those systems, the nonprofit's executives said.</p>
<p>Financial terms of the PE investment were not disclosed.</p>
<p>"For five decades, ECRI's award-winning Spend Management solutions have helped healthcare supply chain leaders navigate supply disruptions with resiliency, save millions of dollars, and benchmark purchasing decisions using the industry's most comprehensive, independent datasets," said Marcus Schabacker, CEO, M.D., president of ECRI, in a statement. "Now, by spinning out Staritas, powered by Accel-KKR to supercharge the power behind the data, improve the user experience, and accelerate innovation, healthcare supply chain leaders can realize even greater value from the platform."</p>
<p>Healthcare organizations currently face rising costs, margin pressure, supply chain disruptions and increasing complexity, often making decisions with fragmented information, such as supplier pricing without benchmarks, or investments without a clear view of total cost, according to ECRI executives.</p>
<p>Staritas claims to have the largest independent source of healthcare supply and capital datasets, with advanced analytics, and says it works with organizations in more than 70 countries to understand market trends and better manage their supply chains. As a division of ECRI for five decades and now as a standalone company, Staritas says it works with 90% of the top U.S. hospitals and health systems to identify $13 billion annually in opportunity savings. </p>
<p>"We are excited to partner with ECRI and support the launch of Staritas, a new company with a 50- year track record of pioneering work in spend and recall management," said Park Durrett, managing director at Accel-KKR in a statement. "Staritas's unmatched independent datasets and domain expertise create a strong foundation for growth and customer impact. We're proud to build on Staritas's legacy and remain committed to the transparency, independence, and objectivity that define its work."</p>
<p>Additional investments from Accel-KKR will be used to enhance platform capabilities, executives said in the press release. </p>
<p>"The data, solutions and people that now make up Staritas are among the best in the field of spend and recall management. We plan to continuously raise the bar in serving healthcare supply chain leaders with next-generation platform and technology advancements that help to protect margins, deliver quality care and boost resiliency," Emmet O'Gara, CEO of Staritas, said.</p>
<p>ECRI, an independent, nonprofit organization focused on healthcare safety, quality and cost-effectiveness, plans to sharpen its focus on patient safety and clinical evidence.</p>
<p>"This move is not a departure, it is a commitment to deepening ECRI's focus on patient safety, clinical evidence, and system-level change across healthcare," Schabacker said. "ECRI's services and solutions are now focused exclusively on creating resilient and safe healthcare systems and assessing technologies used in those systems – backed by new investment and commitment to effect transformative change."</p>
<p>"With the strategic shift, ECRI is investing, at an unprecedented level, in the expert teams, proprietary data assets, and advanced capabilities that allow healthcare organizations to build safety into their culture, their operations, and their systems. Not as a one-time initiative, but as a permanent, self-reinforcing foundation," he said.</p>
<p>Despite decades of nationwide efforts, patient safety in the U.S. remains marked by high rates of preventable harm.</p>
<p>"One in four patient admissions involve an adverse event, and nearly a quarter of those are preventable. That's tragic and unacceptable," said Dheerendra Kommala, M.D., ECRI Chief Medical Officer. said. "Through this strategic move, ECRI is now singularly focused on improving patient safety. We plan to expand solutions that can transform healthcare organizations, building on our legacy of advancing evidence-based medicine."</p>
<p>There have been other large M&A deals in the healthcare supply chain market. In November, investment firm Patient Square Capital <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/finance/premier-inc-go-private-26b-purchase-deal">completed its acquisition</a> of Premier Inc., a provider of data analytics and supply chain solutions, for $2.6 billion.</p>
</div></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
<p><strong>This information is taken from free public RSS feeds published by each organization for the purpose of public distribution. Readers are linked back to the article content on each organization's website. This email is an unaffiliated unofficial redistribution of this freely provided content from the publishers. </strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><s><small><a href="#" style="color:#ffffff;"><a href='https://blogtrottr.com/unsubscribe/55wMX0?signature=d3c0935c0cdbd702ef36555e19dabf249df69613966bbb1ace8ed255419b1ff3'>unsubscribe from this feed</a></a></small></s></p>