A Giant Leap for Kidney Care

Before we founded Cricket Health, we were searching for a big problem to tackle that would change people’s lives for the better. After almost a year of exploration and talking to the smartest people we could find, it became obvious that we should focus on one of the most broken parts of health care — kidney care. 

You’ve probably heard the joke that in the United States we have a sick care system, not a health care system. The truth is that in kidney disease, it’s much much worse than that —we have a life support system.

You’ve probably heard the joke that in the United States we have a sick care system, not a health care system. The truth is that in kidney disease, it’s much much worse than that —we have a life support system. Misaligned incentives–which were originally created with the best of intentions–resulted in a system in which we intervened primarily after kidneys fail and people need life saving therapies, rather than doing the work of prevention, education about treatment options, and engagement to help people avoid this crisis altogether. It’s incredibly costly for payers. It’s grueling for providers. And it’s just awful for patients and their families.

Back in 2015, we started with the heretical idea of creating a kidney care company where both the clinical focus and the financial drivers of the business were not on dialysis, but in finding patients early, intervening to delay kidney failure, and keeping people as healthy as possible and at home. We designed a comprehensive kidney care model, tested and iterated it over several years in a series of clinical studies, and we launched it with our first payer partners in 2019.

Since then, we’ve been delighted by the results we’re seeing. Our patients are highly engaged; they are making informed choices about starting dialysis in the outpatient or home setting; and they have fifty percent fewer hospitalizations than the status quo. Our work has been buoyed by increasing agreement from industry and government that we need to shift the focus from dialysis to chronic kidney disease, as well as the new Medicare payment models that support that shift. 

But with so many steps forward in kidney care, now it is time for a giant leap. The vast majority of people with kidney disease still don’t get the kind of care we provide, and far too many end up with kidney failure too soon, crash into dialysis, and go down a downward dependency spiral that negatively impacts both their lives and their families. Ever since we validated that our program worked, we’ve been thinking about how to bring our model of comprehensive, compassionate, and personalized kidney care to the hundreds of thousands of people with kidney disease across the country. 

That is why we are so excited about bringing together Cricket Health with InterWell Health and the value-based care management division of Fresenius Medical Care, Fresenius Health Plan. 

The opportunity before us is to create a new, united company where the clinical focus and the financial driver are fully aligned and focused on keeping people healthy, at home, and out of the hospital, rather than on dialysis. 

The opportunity before us is to create a new, united company where the clinical focus and the financial driver are fully aligned and focused on keeping people healthy, at home, and out of the hospital, rather than on dialysis.

We will be able to essentially give 1,600 nephrologists superpowers — eyes and ears between appointments with their patients through Cricket Health’s multidisciplinary care teams; predictive analytics capabilities to identify kidney disease earlier; and engagement capabilities. And we’ll be able to do this at Fresenius Health Plan’s scale and scope. This means we have the opportunity to break down the barriers between payers, providers, and patients that have plagued kidney care for decades. 

The reality is that we can’t fix the kidney care system overnight, and some hard work lies ahead of us to execute on this vision. But I’m optimistic. Early on at Cricket Health, we adopted a Culture Code made up of seven pillars: We exist to help our patients live their best lives. Everyone is worthy. We take it personally. We dare mighty things. Humility is a source of our strength. We bring joy to this work. We value each individual’s unique journey. 

The new company we’re creating is committed to those same values. This is a tremendous opportunity to live up to this standard we set, and in doing so, we are going to help make it the norm to keep people from kidney failure and truly give them their lives back — there is nothing more important.