Healthcare providers’ failure to properly coordinate care often leads to the duplication of tests and services, medication errors, delayed or missed diagnoses, and patient confusion and frustration — and this uncoordinated care ends up costing the U.S. about $340 billion per year in wasted resources. That’s more than the costs associated with heart disease or cancer, pointed out Watershed Health CEO Dr. Chip Grant.
In his view, uncoordinated care represents the single largest target for improving patient outcomes and reducing costs in healthcare. This week, his startup completed a $13.6 million funding round to tackle the issue.
New Orleans-based Watershed was founded in 2013 to improve care coordination by connecting providers of all types across the healthcare system.
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“We named it Watershed Health because we envisioned a pivotal change, a watershed moment, in how healthcare data and tools are used to improve patient outcomes,” Dr. Grant declared.
Despite having the best intentions, providers often find themselves ill-equipped to coordinate care due to a lack of timely and comprehensive information, he explained. This prevents providers from making the most informed decisions or taking swift action at the right moment, he noted.
To address this problem, Watershed’s SaaS platform gives providers real-time information about patients, including their health status, social determinants of health, location and involved care team members.
“It not only delivers structured and unstructured data directly and timely, but also facilitates seamless communication and collaboration across the entire healthcare ecosystem, including a virtual workspace for the providers to ask questions and solve patient problems,” Dr. Grant pointed out.
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For example, when a patient is discharged from the hospital, Watershed’s platform can facilitate a smooth transition by providing all relevant care providers — including primary care doctors, specialists, post-acute care providers, transportation services and meal providers — with key information about the hospitalization, Dr. Grant explained.
He also noted that the closed-loop nature of Watershed’s platform helps providers make sure that all planned interventions and services are executed as intended. With the startup’s technology, hospitals can monitor the execution of care plans — and if an action does not happen as scheduled, the care team can intervene.
With Watershed’s platform, data always flows back to the hospital — so whenever a patient returns to the hospital, they are met with a hospital care team who is fully informed of their recent interactions with other healthcare providers, including any updates to their care plan, Dr. Grant said.
He noted that Watershed doesn’t compete with EHRs, health information exchanges, referral platforms, care coordination tools or other provider point solutions. Instead, he thinks his company’s platform complements and enhances these existing technologies.
“While many digital tools provide foundational support for care coordination, they often leave critical gaps in integration and real-time collaboration. Watershed uniquely addresses these deficiencies by offering a comprehensive solution that actively drives coordination across all healthcare settings,” Dr. Grant declared.
The startup partners directly with health plans, which subsidize the cost of its platform in communities where their members receive care.
“As a result, Watershed is typically provided at no cost to community providers in these markets,” Dr. Grant remarked. “Our health plan partners recognize that enhanced care coordination not only leads to better health outcomes for their members but also drives significant cost savings.”
Some organizations using Watershed’s platform include Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Alabama and Springhill Medical Center in Mobile, he added.
Springhill Medical Center cut its hospital readmission in half thanks to Watershed, CEO Jeff St. Clair said in a statement.
Photo: LeoWolfert, Getty Images
