Sharecare CEO Brent Layton took on his role at the company less than two weeks ago. He’s already touting the company’s post-acute care capabilities.
“The assets that are at Sharecare today, like CareLinx, give us the ability to truly impact the post-acute care space,” Layton said at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Wednesday. “To work with an MCO, to work with the government in having people discharged out of the hospital and to make sure when they go home, there is a plan there; the technology exists with our providers and the assets of Sharecare absolutely energize me for what we can do.”
The Atlanta-based Sharecare (Nasdaq: SHCR) is a digital health company that helps people manage their health care needs.
The publicly traded company acquired CareLinx in August 2021 for a purchase price of $65 million. On its end, CareLinx provides consumers access to both medical and non-medical home care services.
In October, Claritas Capital submitted a bid to acquire Sharecare, though nothing has come out of the offer.
CareLinx has a network of about 450,000 caregivers and clinicians, and works with payers, providers, employers and consumers directly to deliver home-based care.
In addition to CareLinx, Sharecare’s business portfolio includes digital therapeutics offerings and its Sharecare+ advocacy solution, along with further resources for employers, health plans, providers and others.
Since Sharecare acquired CareLinx, the latter has seen significant growth. In his first year as Sharecare’s CEO, Layton sees a tremendous amount of opportunity, specifically as it pertains to technology’s role in how health care is delivered and accessed.
“What’s happening is health insurance in this country is changing rapidly,” he said. “What has not kept up is technology. We absolutely believe that we can be a part of that future as you begin to see the changes in commercial health insurance. These are opportunities we can deal with today to enhance and — more importantly — prepare for tomorrow.”
One of the biggest business opportunities Sharecare will focus on in 2024 and beyond is building out its enterprise partners in markets where it’s already situated.
Jeff Arnold, Sharecare’s co-founder and executive chairman, said that early discussions with Layton have opened his eyes to those new opportunities.
“On the provider side, I had an ‘aha moment’ when working with Brent when he said, ‘Let me get this straight, you get paid to collect data,’” Arnold said during the presentation. “It’s expensive to collect data. We get paid over $100 million to do that — and then to realize that our clients are often the biggest employers in any city. So how do we cross sell those hospitals to become enterprise clients? Similar to how we’ve introduced our provider business to our payer clients? So there are tons of cross-selling opportunities.”
Sharecare will rely on flexibility and innovation to not only build stronger relationships with clients, but also to bring on more clients, Layton said.
“I believe the opportunities to help and work with the government are endless for Sharecare,” Layton said. “We have the technology and the flexibility to build that for them. My eight days on the job — I’ve spent half of them talking to hopeful new clients. I absolutely believe that our technology, our flexibility and our scalability gives us ways to bring solutions and a way that we can help people access health care.”
