Maverick's Update

Is it the leader that makes or breaks a company, or is it a combination of timing, luck, long-time planning and effort? If we knew that, we wouldn’t be writing blog posts on Friday mornings. But it seems like leadership matters. Look at primary care — no one denies that primary care physicians are our first line of defense against disease or medical conditions becoming much worse — which puts them in an excellent position to be our value-based care savior. And yet, there has been little change or investment in this area until just recently. Privia Health, for instance, which was tagged a while back as a health tech standout in the primary care world, is taking the next leap by appointing a successful value-based care investor and former HHS leader to its board: Adam Boehler. This leadership move could be a turning point, or it could just be that tech-enabled primary care is having a moment. Other organizations are also doing really well in this space: Aledade raised $260M two weeks ago, CVS Health bought Oak Street Health two months ago, and Vytalize Health raised $100M and Pearl Health raised $75M a few months ago. On June 8, 2023, CMS launched a 10-year-long pilot called Making Care Primary that will fund primary care organizations’ transition to value-based care. What we are sure of is that all of the people behind these efforts have been trying really hard for a really long time to make primary care a bigger focus of our health care system. We are grateful they stick with it, despite what must be immense frustrations and exhaustion. It is like what Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend said when she was breaking up with him (at least, the movie version): “Dating you is like dating a StairMaster.”