At the end of July a large part of Healthways, one of Williamson County’s largest single employers, was bought by out-of-state company Sharecare.
Along with its brand name and population health divisions, Sharecare gained 1,700 employees from Healthways.
Based in Atlanta, Sharecare
is now figuring out the transition, and will be using Healthways’ headquarters in Cool Springs as its home.
Sharecare’s Dermot Waters, senior vice president of product, and Jen Martin Hall, vice president for communications, sat down for an interview about what Sharecare is, what the acquisition means for Williamson County and Healthways employees now and into the future, and other topics.
First off, what does Sharecare do, and how does Healthways and what they do fit into the picture?
WATERS: Sharecare is a digital health and wellness platform. We really
focus on engagement and creating a personalized experience to help our consumers control and manage their health all in one place.
We do that through a series of tools we have. Over the last six years, since CEO Jeff Arnold founded Sharecare in 2010, we have made 10 acquisitions and kind of assembled all the pieces and components to help people manage their health all at one place. There are multiple entry points, whether they are taking a health risk assessment, or getting access to content, or tracking their progress all the way up, to scheduling their appointment and doing telehealth visits.
So there are a lot of tools and components that we do as far as the Sharecare platform. We talk about it as a wheel — we have services and we can plug in other products and technologies as the spokes.
Our market is focused on consumers accessing us directly, but we also license our platform to employers, providers and payers. So we are B to B and B to C. We are focused on delivery of a quality product across all those markets.
As for how Healthways fits, it is in the employer space and very well established. They have been around for a long time and have a very powerful client base. And when we first met the Healthways team, we saw their strategy is very much in line in the employment market with some of the tools and technology we have and some of the access to their clients.
That was one of the things we were initially interested in in Healthways acquisition, how it could help bolster our platform. They have been in the market for a long time with digital population health, management and coaching. So those are pretty powerful things.
We talk about hi-tech/hi-touch. Sharecare has been really good at the hi-tech parts and really focused on how we can build out those digital tools. And Healthways with their coaching has mastered the art of high touch. And bringing those two things together will help really effectively have that true consumer experience.
Dr. Oz was here last week and said the same thing, with the analogy of a surgeon in the O.R. He will have all the tools to monitor a patient and administer their health and have a successful surgery, but nothing can replace the nurse holding the hand of the loved one to make them comfortable. That has equal weight with the technology. We kind of bring that to bear, bringing Sharecare and Healthways together.
MARTIN HALL: Their coaching abilities and what they can do and have been able to do for populations from a disease management standpoint is just incredible. They set the gold standard in the industry so it just perfectly lines up with what Derm was saying of hi-tech meeting high-touch.
Is that why getting the Healthways name and brand were such an important part of the deal? Because Sharecare was interested in their clients?
WATERS: Healthways has been around for a long time and they are well established, especially in the enterprise market. And that is really important for Sharecare. We are a younger company but growing, so putting them together is very powerful.
MARTIN HALL: It is mutually beneficial for both of us. As we start to introduce and roll out some of the coaching tools through our platform, because we’ve got great trusting existing relationships with people who might not be as aware of the Healthways brand, and on the flip side Healthways has amazing relationships with a lot of enterprises and customers that is giving us an incredible introduction and entry point to those folks too.
To change tack here, what do you think of the area?
WATERS: We love it. Our CEO tells us all the time, especially going back to his WebMD days [Arnold founded WebMD], how his first investors were here in the Nashville area. And we spent a lot of time here.
One of Sharecare’s major investors is here, as well. So we have been doing business here for a long time and have been talking about an office here for a long time. Now we have one.
We love having a major footprint here in Healthways; the team is amazing here, and the talent pool here in Nashville and Williamson County is really powerful. So we are very exited about that.
We are burning the road between Atlanta and Nashville. We have been up here back and forth the last three weeks. We’re certainly helping out the hotel industry here.
Healthways is one of the largest singular employers in Williamson County. People might feel a little uncertain about an out-of-state company buying it. What do you say to those concerns?
WATERS: Jeff Arnold and Dr. [Mehmet] Oz were here last week and did a town hall meeting with all the employees to kind of meet the team. Dr. Oz went around and met the whole staff.
You know, we are in the process right now of figuring out what Sharecare and Healthways look like together and building that strategy, and a major part of that is going to be the presence here in Nashville.
And I think that what we were saying before about hi-tech and hi-touch being married together and truly taking that platform that Sharecare has been building for the last six years and bringing the digital expertise to bear is a game-changer for Healthways and for coaching.
Just around the building there is so much excitement about what Sharecare offers and what Sharecare brings to Healthways, and so I think its very positive just where we are going and what the plan is for everything here in Nashville.
With this acquisition you basically tripled the number of employees working for Sharecare. Despite your focus probably being totally consumed by a transition of that magnitude, can you foresee future expansion or hiring by Sharecare or Healthways in Williamson County?
WATERS: Absolutely. We are going to continue to grow. The acquisition of Healthways certainly accelerated that growth. We went from 950 employees to 2,700 roughly overnight.
The thing is, there is so much talent here in the building already, it helps us do what we are doing so much better, and then we can bring some of our expertise to Healthways and make what they are doing better.
So we are going to continue to grow. We are going to grow both in hiring and staffing, and also continue to be an acquisitive company. We are always looking at the latest technologies, start-ups and companies, especially in the Nashville area. So that is definitely going to be something we will continue to do.
Healthways is a national company, headquartered here. Sharecare is also a nationwide company, headquartered in Atlanta. Obviously, your focus will not be on Williamson County – at least not specifically. However, how do you foresee your presence here – any local outreach programs, marketing campaigns or anything like that? How will you fit into the community?
WATERS: We have actually talked about that a lot, like doing local Atlanta stuff. We have a lot of campaigns in the works to do that. And Nashville and Williamson County we will do the same thing, to market locally.
To me, both Atlanta and the Nashville-area are similar places. They both have the same sort of vibe. And now having a major footprint in both we would love to do some test marketing, engagement and community outreach. Especially the base of health care and IT, that is here in the Nashville area. It is a great opportunity for us.
I would say that the Nashville consumer is more health savvy than a lot of others, and so that creates new opportunities for us to experiment and test and do other outreach stuff.
So, nothing hard and fast in the books yet but something we would love to do.
MARTIN HALL: The greater Nashville area has been such a big part and big piece of Sharecare history as well as Jeff Arnold’s longer-term career history. It is not just business, though. It is actually very personal. And we keep uncovering more and more actual personal connections that our employees from Atlanta have with the Nashville area and that our new colleagues at Healthways have with the Atlanta area.
It has been very enlightening and exciting and, again, we have been through 10 acquisitions, and this has been the largest. But I would say that for us it has gone very smoothly. If we didn’t like the team and see so much promise, we wouldn’t be up here.
The integration is going very well and we are excited to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
