In a recent episode of The Strategy of Health, we sat down with CEO Eric Reimer and Chief Growth Officer Tom Gaffney to dissect how Healthmap Solutions has delivered its most successful growth year since 2019. Their insights offer a masterclass in strategic focus: shifting care upstream to Stage 3 Chronic Kidney Disease, integrating advanced digital platforms without losing the human touch, and leveraging AI to empower—not replace—clinical teams. For executive leaders and industry observers, Healthmap’s trajectory is a blueprint for scaling value-based care in an era that demands relentless execution.
Healthmap Solutions grew in 2025 by delivering undeniable savings and clinical outcomes during a period when health plans were ruthlessly culling underperforming vendors. While the broader health tech market contracted, Healthmap secured four new health plan clients—accounting for $1.5 billion in total spend—and renewed contracts with four existing major clients. In the current climate, payers are not looking for experiments. They want partners who can actively manage trend. According to Reimer, the economic pressure on health plans actually worked in Healthmap’s favor.
“I think delivering for the plans in troubled times has really gotten us to be viewed as partners,” he explained. “Being part of this effort to drive their turnaround.”
This dynamic suggests a meaningful shift in the vendor-payer relationship heading into 2026. Health plans are moving away from passive “downstream risk” models where they simply hand off populations. Instead, there is intense scrutiny on how vendors manage chronic conditions. Reimer noted that “a lot of those deals haven’t worked out,” leading to a market correction where only vendors who can prove effective management of the sickest populations—keeping them out of the hospital and adherent to medications—are winning contracts.
The core of Healthmap’s strategy lies in moving upstream to manage patients at Stage 3 CKD, rather than waiting for the catastrophic costs associated with End-Stage Renal Disease. This approach captures patient risk before it spirals, enabling interventions that slow disease progression and significantly reduce total cost of care. Historically, kidney care management focused almost exclusively on the late stages—dialysis coordination and transplant preparation. Gaffney emphasizes that the real opportunity for population health lies earlier in the disease trajectory. By identifying and engaging Stage 3 members, Healthmap can address comorbidities like hypertension and diabetes before they cause irreversible kidney damage. The work involves proactive identification of patients who are often undiagnosed or under-managed, direct collaboration with primary care providers, and management of the whole patient rather than the organ alone.
Gaffney highlighted the specific burden on primary care, noting that PCPs are frequently overwhelmed with general preventive care—vaccinations, screenings, acute needs—and may lack the bandwidth to aggressively manage early-stage kidney decline. By stepping in as a collaborative partner, Healthmap provides the specialized focus that PCPs cannot always offer. “If you’re truly going to slow the progression of the disease, the only way you’re going to do that is to get with the patient early,” Gaffney stated. This upstream focus allows the company to titrate interventions based on the specific stratification of each member, moving away from a one-size-fits-all model to highly personalized care plans.
In the rush to adopt AI, many healthcare organizations fall into the trap of viewing technology as a substitute for human labor. Reimer and Gaffney take a contrarian view: while AI excels at synthesis and prediction, it cannot replicate the human connection required to change patient behavior.
Healthmap deploys AI across three phases of the clinical workflow. Before a call, AI synthesizes patient history, labs, and gaps in care so the nurse is fully prepared before dialing. After the call, AI handles backend documentation, freeing clinicians from data entry. In between, the system predicts the optimal time and channel to contact a patient and suggests the highest-impact clinical intervention—a “next best action” engine that keeps the care team focused on what matters most. Reimer was explicit about the limits of technology in driving adherence.
“It’s not about throwing facts in front of people. Most people know what they need to do… yet they’re not doing those things,” he observed. “You need a human to connect with them and make it clear what the implications of not staying on course are.”
Following the acquisition of Carium, Healthmap has moved from piloting digital tools to fully integrating a multi-channel engagement platform that meets patients on their own terms. If 2025 was the year of foundational integration, 2026 will be the year of feature expansion and daily utility. The integration was driven by a need to modernize member engagement. Patient preferences are not monolithic—some respond to phone calls, others only engage via text. By acquiring Carium, Healthmap gained a “digital front door” supporting biometric monitoring, medication adherence tracking, and secure communication.
Critically, the integration solved what Reimer calls the “stale message” problem. “You can tell a member on a call that they really need to be adherent… four days after, 12 days after, 26 days after, the message gets stale.” Digital tools provide the constant reinforcement and reminders necessary to sustain behavior change between visits. The 2026 roadmap focuses on increasing the platform’s daily utility—encouraging members to log vitals and medications daily to create a richer data set for clinicians—and expanding provider connectivity so data flows seamlessly back to physicians, not just the Healthmap care team.
Healthmap projects 2026 to be a year of “enormous growth,” with plans to increase spend under management by 30 to 40 percent and expand their clinical scope to address broader comorbidities.
The roadmap for the next 12 to 24 months involves aggressive expansion in both client volume and clinical depth. The team is currently implementing four to five new major accounts simultaneously—a significant test of operational scalability. They are deepening the clinical model to manage cardiac and metabolic conditions more aggressively, potentially intervening in patients before they develop kidney disease. And Reimer predicts that 2026 will deliver their best savings rate in company history, driven by a maturing tech stack and the tenure of their clinical teams.
Reimer went on record with a bold prediction: “I believe we’ll have more spend under management than we’ve ever added before.” That confidence stems from a pipeline of upsell opportunities within their current book of business and a market increasingly hungry for proven value-based care solutions.
For healthcare executives, the Healthmap story distills to a simple lesson: in a tightening market, performance is the only currency that matters.
Healthmap didn’t survive 2025 by chasing hype cycles. They thrived by identifying a high-cost, high-complexity population, moving upstream to manage risk early, and executing relentlessly on savings and outcomes. They used AI not to replace their workforce but to arm clinicians with better data. They used digital tools not to replace the doctor but to reinforce the care plan.
If you want to secure renewals and drive growth in 2026, the formula is clear: focus on the chronics, empower your people with technology, and prove your value every single day.
<p>Hello everyone and welcome to the strategy of health podcast from the American Journal of Healthcare Strategy. This is Cole Lions. We are joined today by two friends and guests of mine from Health Map Solutions. We recently had Joe Vadamat on who's the president uh and one of the founders and now we're joined again by the CEO Eric Reamer and then Tom Gaffne. Both of you, I think Tom and Eric, you're some of my first kind of big episodes of 2025.</p> <p>We worked together throughout that year covering kidney care and population uh health. And so now we're in 2026, which is kind of hard for me to believe. So it's great to see you both again. How have you been doing? >> Doing great, Cole. It's great seeing you again. And you know, you mentioned what we did in 2025. We experienced some really good responses from the podcast we've done.</p> <p>Not just th those that Eric and I have done, but others in our organization have also provided podcast participation. We love it. We love what you guys are doing and you've been a great partner for us. >> Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. And we've loved working with your team. I have to ask now that we're in and there's so many things that have happened since we first all kind of talked at the beginning of the year.</p> <p>And I just think about the pace of development in AI and everything else. One of the things I want to ask is what are kind of the most defining themes that you have seen if you have to kind of pick a few. Cole were proud and happy for the success we've had in 25 from a growth perspective. Since I started or since I joined the company in 2019, this has been the most successful growth year we've had as an organization.</p> <p>What's really fueled that growth is the fact that our program stands out based on our ability to really focus on some key program attributes which we believe are industry leaders such as our ability to move upstream and address early on in the CKD process some members that are extremely important for immediate care and that is specifically as we talk about the role of the CKD stage three members. But when we look at mid-stage, we're talking about stage three and stage four.</p> <p>But what really has been a key differentiator for us in the marketplace is the fact that we focus on that stage three. And once we have the ability to get the patients identified, we can start to support and manage. And as with any other chronic condition, what's most important is early identification and early management for successful outcomes. So I think that's been key for us.</p> <p>As we talk about the importance of the stage three members, we also need to talk about our role in supporting the PCPs. >> When you look at the overall key contributors and collaborators for us when we're looking at the provider community, we really have four key ones. One are the PCPs. Second is the nephrologists, which makes a lot of sense. We're a kidney company.</p> <p>And then there are endocrinologists and certainly cardiologists because when we're managing patients we're looking at not just the patient's kidney needs but all coorbidities and you know as we all know PE people with CKD also are going to have other coorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease but specifically as we talk about those PCPs and specifically with the PCPs we have the opportunity to collaborate and support a a provider that, you know, typically hasn't been in in most cases isn't solely focused or primarily focused on the CKD stage three patients.</p> <p>They're more worried about the flu or vaccinations, right? Diabetes, hypertension. So to be able to play a key role in that and help us manage those earlier stages and you know I'll ask Eric to talk a little bit about the importance of those PCPs but I think that's a contributing factor for us and with that we also look at our ability to drive high engagement rates and I'd say the last attribution which we're really focused on is our ability to titrate interventions.</p> <p>So our model is not a one you know oneizefits-all. When we look at kidney disease, we specifically are looking at the stratification of those members by specific stage. And then we know that a stage three patient isn't a stage three isn't a stage three. Everybody has unique needs. Everybody has coorbidities. Other everybody has social determinance of health and we're really making an impact in that population based on the collaboration with those PCPs. >> Remember we had Dr. Shaps and Dr.</p> <p>To Nagowski on both of them talked about that same thing, right? How primary care providers have so many different focuses and how you can't just give them a risk score that's like high, low, medium risk. You can't just put somebody in a a CKD stage and then just treat them all the same, right? They're so dynamic. And that was what I love talking to those clinicians about and I love hearing how it's integrated into your growth flywheel, right?</p> <p>The fact that patients are different is actually kind of a key part of your growth. It's not slowing you down. It seems to be kind of speeding you up in a way. >> Absolutely. And this stage three population is something that is needed by our customers. So the health plan clients that we work with are absolutely focused on the stage three members and what we can do to help improve performance and reduce costs.</p> <p>I think one of the things we're most proud of is that we've really been able to extend our savings and clinical outcomes, improving the clinical outcomes during such a tough time for the health plans, right? It's a time where they're all facing underlying industry trend. They're all fighting for that and they're seeing their profitability hurt. For us to be able to extend our savings opportunities has really cemented our relationships with them.</p> <p>They're all going through the period of saying we've got to be really critical of our vendors and see who's a keeper and who's not and we're thrilled that that's led to extensions of our contracts or added populations into our contracts. And I think that is very very important to us.</p> <p>The other thing I would just highlight is, you know, we have to drive these savings, but then it's followed by a gain share reconciliation where we all have to look at data and make sure that we're on the same page about what we saved and then get them to actually make that payment for gain share. That is not easy to do and it's harder to do in a time where the health plan themselves is having financial challenges.</p> <p>We've been very successful at doing that throughout the year, which is again a testament to the savings. The last thing I would bring up is really tech and tech deployment. I know that's going to be spoken to throughout the podcast, so I won't go too deep, but I will say I think it's a year where we really focus on getting ops, product, and technology all on the same page about let's make sure whatever we do on technology leads to efficiency gains and effectiveness gains.</p> <p>And I think we were very clear about the priorities. We decided what we were going to do well, what we were going to postpone for the time being, and the team has really executed exceptionally well on that tech deployment, which we'll get into in more detail. [snorts] >> A lot of the things you say are very poignant. I think, you know, I worked at Jefferson Health Plans, of course, they had that $200 million kind of loss that they they said was due to GLP1s.</p> <p>We've also had a reduction of VC spending in this exact space, the health tech AI enabled payer space. We've had 2025 has not been a year that many people would say has been known for extreme or excellent growth, but you all have had that sustained growth. You've done better in 2025. I mean, Tom, you were just saying that.</p> <p>If you had to list either of, you know, both of you, if you had to list just a couple of the the biggest singular drivers, and I know you mentioned them at the beginning, but I just want to reiterate, what were those biggest drivers that actually allowed you all to continue to grow foundationally as a company? Why have you been able to grow with so much headwinds, you know, facing you? >> Yeah, I would say really it's performance, performance, performance.</p> <p>All of our growth needs to be supported by the fact that we're succeeding in what we're currently doing for our clients. When we look at success, we look at our ability to deliver savings. Uh we look at our ability to enhance clinical outcomes and we look for operational and service excellence in what is needed for all components of the program. So with that said, I think those really have been some key drivers for us.</p> <p>For example, in 2025, we ended up signing four new clients, accounting for about 1.5 billion in total spend. Wow. >> We're able to renew four new contracts with four of our current clients. And these clients have been working with us for the last 3 years. In my assessment, these contract renewals are really what defines the type of company we are and the results that we provide each performance year for our clients.</p> <p>So I if you want to okay how come health mapap has been successful and what have they done to be successful we can look no further than the fact that we've been working with national regional and local health plans for the past 3 years and it's time for contract renewal and all of them have jumped in and said yes you know sign on for another three years so pretty significant and then with that same store growth has been something also coal that's been great for So looking at our current clients and identifying, okay, we've been successful in the initial relationship with the KHM program, our Kenya health management program.</p> <p>We then have the ability to expand in other markets, expand in other lines of business, and we've been able to do all of that, but the only way we were able to deliver it was to look at some of these key metrics that are driving performance. So, the ability to reduce overall savings, decrease impatient visits and readmissions, slow disease progression, and optimize renal replacement therapy. All of those components we've been able to meet or exceed for all of our clients.</p> <p>And that's really what has driven our growth in 2025. So, it's that relationship, but it's not just that you're nice and have good customer service. It's based on what you said, performance, performance, performance, and then those metrics. And I like what you're doing is you're using this, and again, I kind of liken it to the flywheel.</p> <p>You're using this to use that revenue to actually enhance the services, enhance the savings, which gets new clients, reduces your your customer acquisition costs because they're going to be staying with you. >> And that goes to exactly what Tom said. We're delivering. And folks in the industry have moved around. They're also very tight with people at other plans. They're all looking for solutions that are real. They don't have time and money to waste on solutions that fail.</p> <p>But one after another, the customers were signing up have heard directly from our customers or they've actually left one organization to another and decided I want to bring the best solutions over to my new role and that really is rewarding because it shows we're delivering to them. >> That's incredible. I talked to Joe Vadamadam, the CE, the president, one of the founders last time.</p> <p>There was a lot of development when I talked to him specifically regarding this carium some of the acquisition some of the advanced technologies. Eric I have to ask what has happened since I talked to Joe? Has there been new uses that have been implemented? What news can you share on this front? I'm really excited to hear about it. >> For us the most important thing about carry is to really meet the member where they are. I'm making it very simple.</p> <p>We all probably have friends and family that, you know, when you call them, they're hard to reach, but you can always text them. They'll always respond and you could almost have a full dialogue on a text. There are other people in my life that I know will maybe say, "Yeah, call me." And that's a phone call. That's what they're comfortable interacting. Same thing with members. They're they're be individuals. They're humans. They have a way of communicating.</p> <p>and you've got to make sure you've got all channels for them to engage. It's really important. Second thing I'd say is it really gives us a chance to not replace our phone calls, our visits, our video calls. It's really to enhance and reinforce the messages. You can tell a member on a call that they really need to be adherent to their medication. four days after, 12 days after, 26 days after, the message gets stale unless you're giving them constant reinforcement, reminders, encouragement.</p> <p>We do that and we do that through our digital engagement app. That really allows us the best of both worlds. You can have deep interaction, but then you can have really frequent touch points. And that's really how advertising works, right? You need a lot of reinforcement of the key messages. I think that's really key. what we're seeing in 26 as we get into 26 our goals are to get this into the hands of more members because we're starting to see some of that uptick.</p> <p>The second thing is we really want to increase the functionality. So we went out there with base functionality frankly that's already built carry was used for other disease states etc. So they have the capability we wanted to make sure that we were taking that functionality and getting people comfortable doing some of the basics.</p> <p>This year we really want to get to a point where people have a reason to come on board and use carry daily if not you know not weekly daily so that they're putting in their weight their blood pressure readings um they're confirming that they've taken their meds and that really again anytime we can have another touch point with these members it's really really valuable.</p> <p>The last thing we want to achieve through carry this year and really extend our impact with carry is having the physicians have more uptick. It was really built Karium was built for the needs of physicians and health systems. That was their original client before we bought them. And so it was really designed in with the mindset of what does a clinician want to get from a member on a daily basis? What do they want to get alerted from when the member is not in front of them?</p> <p>And we're going to do more this year to make sure that that information is flowing uh consistently to the physicians as well which we think really will lead to more member satisfaction, greater engagement and ultimately again more savings and better outcomes. >> So it was kind of the acquisition and then it was that introduction of the basic functionality which explains why Joe is a little secretive about what the future plans were. Didn't want to give anything away which I appreciate.</p> <p>And now you're saying that there's going to be significant feature enhancement. I have to ask as a CEO, is this difficult for you at all to manage kind of an entire new company in a way? I mean, it's a huge component of health map solutions. >> Well, we've done a great job integrating the teams. We carry them management specifically wanted to be part of the overall goal and not be just siloed off into a corner. That was a commitment I made to them personally and we've lived up to.</p> <p>So they are very involved in everything we do to the extent that really almost every interaction we're going to have with members and providers in in the near future will be done over a platform that's powered by some of the carrying technology. So it's not as if they're off on an island and I'm sort of managing two companies. It's really a much more integrated approach which is great. Honestly, the biggest challenge has been as a CEO is the functionality exists and is there.</p> <p>It's we want to do so many things with it right from day one, but you do want to start measuring and seeing the impact. It's like putting yourself on a number of meds at the same time. You want to do one at a time so you can measure what the impact of each one is. So, we're rolling out, as much as we're hungry to see the whole functionality, it's hard to sometimes restrain yourself from going full board, but over the next quarter or two, the functionality is really going to expand.</p> <p>And and I can cut this part out if it doesn't make sense, but this is also kind of a personal question is, you know, we're seeing these capabilities where we're able to put these these features in programs. Kind of like what you're saying, the features are there. How do you avoid that kind of that FOMO, the fear of missing out?</p> <p>Like, do you ever worry that somebody is going to implement a feature before you or, you know, do you ever feel that urge to like rush and just get everything out there as soon as possible? Yeah, I think you've got to be, you know, you you've got to have some self-restraint and know what's best for the organization. We think what we're doing is already on the cutting edge of of what we need to be doing.</p> <p>So, we're not, you know, we haven't had that concern where we've seen someone kind of jump ahead. In fact, in our competitive set, we know we're ahead on the digital front. And so, for us, it's how do you again make sure you're using it? you're it's an evolution over the next couple of quarters of of how you're using that functionality. We also need to get our our customers, you know, comfortable with all that and and that's why doing it on a piece effort, it really makes a lot of sense.</p> <p>>> That's impressive. So, you built a good company [laughter] is really the answer to that. I love that. So, I mentioned earlier a lot of different challenges, you know, the government, AI, Medicare, there's so many that are happening right here, you know, this year and last year. Um, and really it's been a decade of changes, but when you're thinking about industry tren trends that have had the biggest kind of impact on your organization, what have they been?</p> <p>What are some of the ones that have been the biggest? And then how have you adapted around these? >> Yeah, I would say there's three things that stick out to me. The first one I would mention the higher utilization again that the industry is dealing with and I think that's resulted in obviously pressure for our customers which has made it that much more important for us to drive savings and deliver on commitments.</p> <p>I think delivering for the plans in troubled times has really gotten us to be viewed as partners and being part of this effort to drive their turnaround and be a participant in their turnaround. And it is, as Tom has said, it's really led to a lot of dialogue around further expansions with our current customers. I also think in some ways it's played into our model of the stage 3s because when you have a vendor you really trust, you want to drive as much savings and activity through them.</p> <p>And so when we talk to different plans, they're really excited about the fact that there's twice the opportunity if you include the stage 3s. and it gives them again a chance to double the savings opportunity with a dependable vendor. So the first one though is is that higher utilization and more vendor scrutiny and I think it's helped us along the way. I think the second one you'd mentioned the use of AI. You know we are using AI again to really improve efficiency and effectiveness.</p> <p>On the efficiency side, we do things like creep all synthesis of information, back-end documentation, things that are really just allowing the clinicians to practice being clinical as opposed to doing more administrative tasks. Anything that we can automate that's administrative, we love to do.</p> <p>On the effectiveness side, and Joe touched on this, you know, we're doing a lot of work on the next best action so that the system in real time can customize the next thing you're going to do with each member based on what they're focused on. And that's really the next best clinical thing, but also like the most effective medium.</p> <p>Literally, you can get down to the ideas of when should you call a patient, when should you put out digital reminder, when are they most responsive, should it come from a member, should it come from the doctor? How do you balance all those things? That's all being built and deployed. And we're not a company and a technology shop that waits and waits and there's a big boom. It it evolves. So, we have releases every week where we seeing progress on all these things.</p> <p>So, really makes a huge difference. So when Chad GPT health was released that week, you all were not blindsided. You were kind of just expecting this kind of technology developed because you'd been already working on it yourself. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we know what the technology can do. We've seen it.</p> <p>I think one of the key things and and we talk about use of AI, which is I'd say the second biggest trend I see after the higher utilization piece is that every plan has a different level of comfort around AI. They all know it's coming. They all know it's here, frankly. But there are plans that really they want to be a leader in that space and they really want to embrace the fact that you're using AI. They're almost demanding it.</p> <p>There are others that are being very cautious and saying we want to look at every use case before you release it, etc. And I would just say they're our customers. So our job as a company is to adapt to the customer's pace. make sure every time we are asking for approvals or introducing something new, we have a very clear benefit for the members and the organization that we can explain to our customers and when we do that we find that we're quite successful in rolling it out.</p> <p>I'd say the third biggest trend is this chronic care management. I think there was a time where everyone said, "I'm going to downstream the risk and not be as concerned about how someone's going to manage that risk." I think a lot of those deals haven't worked out. And I think there's a lot more scrutiny appropriately on what are you going to really do to manage these chronically ill folks? How are you going to get them better outcomes?</p> <p>How is it going to be clinically rich, not just a coding a coding challenge? And so we spend a lot of time again showing how that chronic uh management works. And again, I think that that's played well for us because in an environment where health plans really have to assess how do I get better at managing cost of care, that's ultimately what they have to do.</p> <p>And they have to do it in a way that's really helping the the sickest of the sick, which is more about what we do, getting them into nurses, getting them to take their drugs, getting them to take their labs, monitoring their behavior, but staying out of the hospital. There aren't that many solutions that do that.</p> <p>And I think that need to re and the understanding that you really got to focus on the chronics and you really have to see what models are sustainable because they're truly making a difference for the members has really helped us as well. But it's shaped how we think about our own offering as well. >> I appreciate you saying that. I recently spoke with Dr. Kernner who's of Heartbeat Health and he was talking about something very similar. That episode's going to be coming out this week.</p> <p>But in regards to how value-based care has this huge promise, right, and huge capability, so did a lot of these tech companies that came out when the first models released, but their actual ability to reduce costs in the total system ended up being lower because it wasn't actually keeping people out of the hospital. Do you think that some of these technologies just took time to see whether they actually produced value or not?</p> <p>And that's why it took us three or four years to kind of realize that these technologies weren't valuable because you know what I mean like it seems like we've had some of these technologies around we've implemented them and then we've kind of said it seems like the savings isn't good enough let's go back to fee for service or something but your clients are continuing to reup to you know even expand why how did you know I guess when you started this software or when you started this company that it was actually going to achieve ROI and be successful?</p> <p>That's a great question. Um, and you mentioned you had Joe on board who was uh, you know, our president and co-founder. I was the chairman at the time. Um, we had a we had a thesis and we spent a lot of time with PCPs and nephrologists and members about what it would take to save money in the space. We didn't know right that we we had to pilot it. We had to learn. We had to evolve the model. We did that in a sensible way.</p> <p>We didn't take on massive risk charter customers that Tom was helpful in getting us some of those secured and we learned on every one of them. We got better at every one of them. So I think to some extent you've heard us say in the past my team and most people that have heard me speak say we don't have it all figured out. We get better all the time. I think that's been the right attitude because the truth is no one has it all figured out.</p> <p>I think you've got to really look at it's not the bells and whistles of a technology, right? It's really what is the technology going to try to achieve? What is the service that we put around that technology trying to achieve? Is it sensical? You we've talked about before the idea of, you know, putting people in the home. Can you get a real ROI by serving hundreds of thousands of people with kidney care if you're only going to interact with them in the home? We think that's a challenge.</p> <p>Hard to scale, hard to make an ROI. You got to test these things and you know eventually the proof is in the pudding. I can tell you our model works. We've just had enough data points, enough years and enough you know different clients that that consistency of result is what we're so proud of. >> I love that answer. I appreciate that. Very useful for me as a business owner as well. It's that iteration that's so important. I'll have two final questions. The first is for Tom.</p> <p>In 2025, you were seen, Health App Solutions was seen as the go-to kidney solution, right there. You know, it's kind of like people think of the word Google when they want to search something. People are starting to associate that with with your brand here, especially for the government business health plans, which is a bit a bit more of a difficult market to penetrate. And so my question is, how did you do this in 2025?</p> <p>Can you give us a few hints maybe a game plan a little bit of how you were able to especially since it's a new company still you know it's still not and it's also in an area that's not as as widely known right like we were just talking chronic care is is just kind of now being taken really seriously so how are we able to do this >> yeah you know Cole good question and I was thinking back as you were just laying the question when we spoke back in January I think one of the things that I had shared with you a year ago was, you know what, we didn't go after every customer.</p> <p>We went after the right customer for Healthmap and ultimately the right customer for our clients in that we understood that there are multiple factors that we would need to align on. And we wanted to be thoughtful because as Eric had said, every time we have a new customer, we're learning and we're enhancing the overall value of our program for our customers. Today about 85% of our business is Medicaid and Medicare.</p> <p>So when you look at that level of volume and you think about everything that we've spoken about during this podcast as it relates to performance results, predictability, that's still what is key for our customers. If we look at what company if we're the company of choice in 2026, what does that mean?</p> <p>We won't be the company of choice for every company, but what we will do is be able to identify those customers that are looking for p predictable savings, consistent results, strong NPS scores for both provider and member, the ability to have a long-term relationship based on the ups and downs, es and flows of the business today. as we've seen in the last year as it relates to some of the trend issues. CMS is coming out talking about some rate changes.</p> <p>All of those things are factors in how we will decide to appropriately position our business with our customer. I would say the final thing, Cole, that I would add is in growth. We often talk about, you know, me as a chief growth officer, Eric as a CEO. We've got about 600 sales reps in our company, and those are the sales reps that make a difference.</p> <p>Those are the sales reps that are able to deliver the high performance and quality of service that allows me and Eric and Joe to speak to our customers about. So I think you look at that secret sauce, a big part of that secret sauce is the execution of the great employees that we have and that truly has been what's been our success story for 25 and it will be for 26 and beyond. >> I think that's an awesome answer in the age of AI, right?</p> <p>right to say that it's our people that are making our our company successful and that's making us the go-to choice in in the time when some people would say, "Oh, it's our model. It's our technology." You know, I love that and is, you know, you have the technology, of course, you've we've been discussing it this whole time, but I love how you bring it back to the people who've created this technology, which was all of the people, which was awesome. So, thank you for that.</p> <p>And and Eric, I have to say, what can we expect from 2026? We talked last year at the beginning of the year. You gave us some sneak peeks. It ended up being even better than what we had expected. What are you thinking is going to happen this year? >> Yeah, I think it's going to be enormous growth year. We were on a call a couple hours ago where we were talking about how we simultaneously implement four or five new accounts that we've won. We're really excited about that growth.</p> <p>We know a number of other folks that we believe we're well positioned for. We've got upsell opportunities inside of our books that we've done that we're in conversations with. So, we know we're gonna have another growth year, a significant growth year. I'll go on record of saying 26, I believe, we'll have more spend under management than we've ever added before. We know that some of that growth even baked into 27. Even if we did nothing else, we'll have tremendous growth years in 26 and 27.</p> <p>I think the second is our savings rates were the highest they'd ever been in 2025 despite the industry utilization. I think we will have more impact on savings and outcomes than we've had in the past.</p> <p>we'll have our best savings rate and that's really due to the roll out of carry the functionality that we're putting into our platform the use of AI that we're building into our platform and as Tom says it's our people right so again the technology is fueling and making our people better they're not replacing people it's not about throwing facts in front of people you most people know what they need to do. They can do a Google search or a chat GPT search. They're not doing those things.</p> <p>So, you need a human to connect with them and make it clear what the implications of not staying on course are and the benefits of staying on course are. And our people are exceptionally good at that, but they get better all the time. And I think we're giving them now the tools to even be better at that. So, I think we'll have greater impact than ever before. I also think we are very focused now on really driving better results inside the coorbidities around kidney disease.</p> <p>We've done that forever. That's big portion of what we do. But we know that if you take a deep dive into other coorbidities our members suffer from will have even better results.</p> <p>And I think you're going to start seeing that and we're going to start talking more about the results we're having on the coorbidities specifically both inside of our kidney population and either towards the end of this year or maybe at the beginning of next year start really thinking about how we can member you and start managing some of those coorbidities potentially with folks that don't have kidney disease.</p> <p>You know just folks that are frankly headed towards kidney disease if they don't manage their disease better. and a lot of our platform, our team, our skill sets really lend themselves to that. So 26 is going to be an exciting year. I feel like we've accomplished a lot already in 27 days here, but I'm sure the best is yet to come. We're really excited to go out there and execute.</p> <p>>> I am personally excited to see how the co-orbidities that you handle expands because I think if you remember when we first had met before even doing podcasts, that's what I was interested about was like this seems like such a perfect solution for everything. what you've explained is by the reason it is is because you've been focused and so I'm excited to see and also learn kind of from a student perspective how you are expanding while remaining focused.</p> <p>So it's going to be an awesome year. I am very excited for it and I hope we can have you on again. So thank you so much Eric and Tom both for everything this year. I've loved all of our episodes and I really enjoyed talking with you again. yearin review episode. It was really excellent and I hope we can stay in touch and talk again soon and possibly January 2027 we're going to have to do another one of these episodes and review your growth. >> We look forward to that great partnership.</p> <p>We appreciate you and everything you and your team do. So, thank you very much.</p>
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