Soda Health – a health tech company enhancing the use of benefit dollars to improve health outcomes and reduce inequities – announced a $50 million Series B financing. General Catalyst led the round with additional capital from former Humana CEO Bruce Broussard and participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Define Ventures, Qiming Venture Partners USA, and SVB Capital. And Caitlin Donovan of General Catalyst has joined Soda Health’s board of directors.
This year, tens of millions of seniors rely on Medicare Advantage for over $100 billion worth of supplemental benefits and reward dollars—a significant enrollment driver as inflation continues to raise the cost of groceries and over-the-counter products.
The administration of these benefits has not kept up with technology, retail trends, or shopping behavior. This limits how health plans and members can optimize their spending and leave them frustrated by inaccurate item assortments, confusion over which products can be purchased, and outdated methods of accessing their benefits.
The Soda Health benefits administration platform addresses these challenges by aligning incentives among payors, retailers, and consumers to unlock greater value and deliver better outcomes for all.
To meet the essential needs of health plans and their members, Soda Health harnesses an extensive retail network to streamline the delivery of benefits for food, health products, and pharmacy services nationwide. The platform delivers benefits for all through efficient and personalized offerings, including:
— Members receive a simplified benefits experience with easy-to-use Smart Benefits and a consumer-grade member experience to support stronger health outcomes and ease of navigation.
— Health plans can design, launch, and scale benefit programs supported by a vast retail network and best-in-class analytics tools to enhance member experience, optimize utilization, close care gaps, and improve STAR ratings.
— Retailers become vital to health care delivery by leveraging their weekly touch-points with members to drive high ROI benefit spending and motivate the right behaviors via their integrated pharmacies and registered dieticians.
The Soda Health Smart Benefits platform enables members to use benefit dollars on approved goods and services and get rewarded for conveniently closing gaps in care at their favorite local retailers. Utilizing an open-loop payments infrastructure, Smart Benefits adjudicates item-level purchases in real-time at over 50K retail locations across the U.S., such as Kroger, Albertsons, CVS, and Hy-Vee, among other major retail chains and local ethnic grocers.
Launched in 2021 by former Walmart and Optum executives, Soda Health has experienced rapid growth as it improves members’ lives daily. The Series B funding will accelerate the company’s growing retail transactions and enhance core services.
These funds will scale operations, launch new data products, and expand capabilities to new CMS-compliant benefit categories and gap closure strategies to improve Star ratings. And these advancements will enable the company to achieve risk-based structures with Medicare Advantage and Medicaid plans and dramatically expand the set of CMS-compliant benefit offerings to reduce the cost of care and improve health outcomes measurably.
KEY QUOTES:
“We are on a mission to ensure supplemental benefits add value to all in the healthcare ecosystem – that they keep patients healthier, enable retailers to leverage their relationship with consumers, and provide a key touchpoint to patients for payors.”
– Robby Knight, co-founder and CEO of Soda Health
“Soda Health has amassed a high-value network with the most innovative retailers in the country. They are uniquely positioned to create a new incentive structure to better serve members, health plans, and retailers to improve outcomes and lower the cost of care.”
– Bruce Broussard
“We believe there are smarter ways to optimize health plan spending. Soda Health and their &more network offer a solution that uses supplemental benefit dollars more wisely—delivering better data, closing care gaps, and driving patient outcomes on what we see as a best-in-class, secure, and flexible platform. Healthcare is an interconnected ecosystem, and when a company aligns the needs of payors, providers, retailers, and patients, it’s a win for all.”
– Caitlin Donovan, partner at General Catalyst
