Success Story
When COVID-19 struck, usage of Vida’s virtual care platform skyrocketed. The small data team needed a scalable architecture and expert resources—fast.
Overview
Challenge
Vida Health’s explosive growth during the pandemic necessitated a revamp of its data technology infrastructure to support scalability. However, Vida’s small in-house data team lacked experience with modern data tools.
Solution
Vida partnered with Data Clymer to quickly deploy a reliable, scalable, and efficient data architecture by integrating dbt, Fivetran, and Looker on top of Vida’s existing BigQuery cloud data warehouse.
Data Technology Stack
Key Results
Launched scalable data infrastructure in less than 6 months to support rapid business growth
Improved profitability by launching customers faster and minimizing member paybacks
Boosted clinical efficiency by more than 10%
Improved clinical outcomes and effectiveness by 15%
Building a Scalable Healthcare Analytics Solution
Vida Health is a virtual care platform that treats both chronic physical and mental health conditions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, personal health, mental well-being, and virtual care became urgent priorities for millions of people, resulting in rapid member growth and increased usage of Vida’s platform.
In July 2020, Trenton Huey joined Vida as Sr. Director of Data, with a mission to accelerate the company’s data strategy and implement modern technologies to support growth. And with the pandemic’s ongoing impact on physical and mental health, time was of the essence.
According to Trenton, “We needed to quickly develop a new data platform. Healthcare is a data-heavy industry, and with the significant growth we were experiencing, our current systems were struggling. We required a scalable architecture, increased automation, and expertise to help drive our data strategy and outcomes.”
Data Strategy Development and Execution
Step 1: Identify expert resources.
Vida’s small data team was highly skilled, but lacked formalized expertise in modern data transformation technologies like dbt and Fivetran. They had been relying on custom-built solutions that were effective when the company was smaller but were not scalable.
Trenton commented, “From my experience, the sooner you involve others, the better. Data Clymer had the right people with expertise in the technologies we needed, allowing us to take actionable steps immediately.”
Step 2: Build out healthcare analytics tools and processes.
First, Data Clymer helped Vida implement Looker across its business, developing business dashboards and setting up KPIs. “Thanks to Data Clymer’s support, we saw a significant increase in business intelligence user adoption, going from 0 to 150,” said Trenton. “Since much of this technology is new for our team, it was helpful to have another person to bounce ideas off of and receive advice on the best approach.”
Next, Data Clymer streamlined canonicalization by implementing dbt and Fivetran. Vida’s customers are health plans and large employers with vast amounts of data that needs to be processed and standardized. With the new tools, Vida can efficiently onboard customers, stratify members, and optimize program delivery.
Step 3: Learn and grow.
In addition to setting up dbt, Fivetran, and Looker, Data Clymer trained the Vida team on how to use the tools so they can continuously mature their healthcare analytics data program. The teams continue to work collaboratively to ingest additional medical data sources, create automated clinical workflows, and improve provider efficiency.
“Data Clymer had the expertise to streamline the initial setup and implementation of dbt and Fivetran. Our in-house team is now empowered to use those capabilities to process data in a scalable way.”
Trenton Huey, Sr. Director of Data
Delivering Healthy Data Outcomes
Modernizing its data stack has resulted in a number of positive outcomes for Vida.
Improved Clinical Effectiveness by 15%
Vida is a value-based platform with a money-back guarantee, so the business is highly motivated to do everything it can to drive effectiveness. Data is critical to that effort. Reliable, fast data enables Vida to track whether users are accessing the platform and getting healthier—and ultimately, tracks how much Vida might need to pay back to customers.
Trenton said, “We use data to gain insight into the effectiveness of programs and make real-time improvements. Operational analytics and reporting provide visibility into usage so we can optimize follow-up actions. We can determine whether intervention is necessary and what type would be most effective. If the data shows members are getting healthier, it’s a win/win situation.”
Improved Clinical Efficiency by 10%
Vida now looks at data more holistically and leverages it to drive efficiencies. They’ve begun using low code tools to integrate analytics directly into operational systems in order to deliver more efficient and precise care. For example, a high severity warning can automatically trigger an alert for a phone call, improving response time by eliminating unnecessary steps and manual handoffs.
Vida is also working with availability data and capacity optimization to better manage caseloads and schedules, thereby improving provider predictability. Trenton explained, “The same way Uber and Lyft maximize supply and demand for their vehicles, we’re optimizing provider capacity to ensure we’re not underutilizing or overutilizing the provider network.”
Improved Scalability and Customer Onboarding
As Vida has scaled, so have the variations of their fees-at-risk programs. They now offer more than 50 different performance guarantees based on member health metrics. Fivetran and dbt have helped the data team scale their metrics development capabilities so they can easily create variations for different offerings instead of creating a brand new pipeline every time.
Customer onboarding is also much more efficient. To launch a new customer, Vida needs to collect and process a vast amount of data, such as medical eligibility, insurance eligibility, claims data, and more. With dbt, Vida can quickly process this data and launch new customers in a fraction of the time, making a tangible impact on the bottom line.
“The Data Clymer team was instrumental in helping Vida scale up our data platform in a short time, without having to hire experts in-house. It was invaluable to have another strong technical voice to guide our strategy and hands-on keyboard support to build out tools and processes."
Trenton Huey, Sr. Director of Data
Driving Value Amidst Economic Uncertainty
Looking to the future, Vida Health is focused on leveraging data to drive value in a shifting economy. They are beginning to outline their data interoperability strategy and are identifying additional ways to maximize outcomes while reducing costs.
Trenton explained, “Two years ago, we were in a massive growth scenario. Now because of the economy, the focus is much more on efficiency. We want to make it faster to integrate pieces of relevant data to drive value. Creating automated workflows between different platforms and tickets makes the whole process more accurate.”
Related: Healthcare Analytics Solution
Need Help Scaling for Growth or Improving Efficiency?
Vida’s healthcare analytics success story shows that with the right data strategies, resources, and technologies, a company can scale up quickly and efficiently.
Data Clymer played a critical role in helping Vida achieve its goals. Contact us today to learn how we can help your organization with data strategy consulting, data architecture, data engineering, and data visualization.
