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Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez, and welcome back to the HLTH Matters podcast. Today, I’m joined by Matthew Condon. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Bardavon Health Innovations. He works tirelessly as a staunch advocate for transparency in healthcare and champions technology innovation within the industry that benefits injured worker’s compensation patients. He has been recognized nationally as an entrepreneur to watch by repeatedly forming game-changing companies that bring positive disruption to the marketplace. Bardavon is no different. With Bardavon, Matt has combined his passion for the industry and desire to make a difference with his storied experience of successfully running startups. The resulting effort is an industry-leading healthcare data analytics company focused on promoting a culture of transparency in the worker’s compensation sector. Matt’s vision for Bardavon is to optimize the way patients, therapy providers, employers and carriers, and other key stakeholders interact with each other. By using clinical treatment data gathered through bNOTES, its proprietary cloud-based clinical intelligence system, Bardavon is succeeding in its mission to change workers’ compensation, combining clinical treatment data with claims data enables key stakeholders to define functional outcomes based on each individual’s patient’s health. I’m excited to be with him today because he is a trailblazer in the way that we can transform healthcare. And with that introduction, I want to welcome you to the podcast, Matt, thanks for being with us.
Matt Condon:
Thank you for having me.
Saul Marquez:
It’s a pleasure. Now let’s kick it off with an opportunity to get to know you. What is it that inspires your work in healthcare?
Matt Condon:
I think the patients. So we’re honored to be able to serve 60 to 80 million of the US workers in this country that represent the labor workforce, and historically they haven’t gotten access to the best healthcare. And so I think, what moves us at Bardavon every day is the ability to revolutionize that experience and bring the best healthcare to the men and women that are building our roads, and fighting our fires, and protecting our streets, and that’s a really beautiful mission. I think that is an honor for all of us who wear this brand to serve.
Saul Marquez:
I agree. I think it’s fantastic. Thank you for sharing that.
Matt Condon:
Yeah, thanks, yeah.
Saul Marquez:
So, Matt, historically speaking, delivering the best quality care to the labor workforce, as you mentioned, hasn’t been a top priority in healthcare, but that seems to be changing. What improvements are you seeing in how we deliver care to the American worker?
Matt Condon:
You know, in many ways we’re emerging into a marketplace where we really are appreciating the uniqueness of this workforce, right? And we’re appreciating that they need unique engagement. We’re seeing the employer really stand up as a stakeholder in the space that they hadn’t been before and want to expect and demand exceptional healthcare for their associates. I think in the macro, we’re seeing everything from the economic environment that we’re all existing in right now, creating a premium on the US worker. Every place we go, we eat, we see this labor shortage happening right now. And so the ability to keep those people at work, to make them feel honored and fulfilled there and to get them when they do have injuries, the best healthcare, and in all cases when we can avoid it, to focus on that as well, I think is a key piece that is emerging. And we’re seeing at a conference right now where MSK is one of the hot things, right? It’s been the last couple of years, then one of the hot things, I believe that if we’re right at Bardavon, we will see actually the worker’s compensation marketplace be one of the drivers of innovation and change. And that innovation and change will then spread out to commercial space as well, because it’s all the same employees getting the same injuries and the same zip codes and being treated by the same providers.
Saul Marquez:
You know, it’s a good opportunity to level set. Talk to us about how Bardavon actually delivers value.
Matt Condon:
Yeah, from hire through retire, and it’s really important for us to take a long-term view of how we support that associate. So we are emerging to the market with really preventative early-stage solutions that we’re really proud of, and so ’23 will be a big piece for us with that. We merged in a company last year … that we’re really excited about because it allows us to get on the phone of all of our injured associates and to name them and identify them and to serve as kind of this concierge experience, but then also augment traditional onsite physical therapy experience with virtual care to get, again, the best outcome, most efficiently and effectively. And then what we refer to internally as kind of our core business, we partner with over 25,000 providers at over 10,000 sites everywhere in the US. We’re accessible to the entire 90% of the US, we have easy access too. We partner with those providers, they get out of their EMR and into our cloud-based platform when they are serving the patients from the employers we partner with, and it’s both their billing and their documentation system. And in that way, we can intervene and optimize care at the keystroke and really create an environment where the employers we work with know what kind of healthcare experience their employees are getting everywhere in this country.
Saul Marquez:
So that type of access to data really helps the employer understand, hey, what kind of care is my employee receiving?
Matt Condon:
It helps, but it’s more than that. It does, yes, it helps them actually see, instead of doing 30-day claims reviews where they see what discount they maybe got, they can see within minutes what kind of experience their associate is having and if he or she is actually improving in care. It’s really next generation of insight into what the return on investment is. At the same time, it allows our network of providers to learn every day from other providers treating similar patients. When we see a provider doing something exceptional in New York this morning, we can apply that to Des Moines at lunch today, and then apply those two sets of learnings to LA this evening, and then do that feedback loop again every day to maximize that experience. And that’s really, we believe, represents the future of where we all want our healthcare platforms to take us.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, I totally agree, Matt. If we can have near real-time data to make decisions, that is the optimal, so kudos for you guys being able to put this system and platform together. Focusing on the American worker, how could we improve the way we deliver healthcare to reduce injuries and also improve musculoskeletal health in the workplace?
Matt Condon:
I think you start first with the actual structure of which we look at it, like for some reason, years ago, we bifurcated the healthcare experience for the American worker. And so you have the benefit side that goes through Blue Cross or Cigna, Aetna, or whatever, and then you have the worker’s comp that is, actually comes under the property and casualty section of their kind of benefit structure. And so literally, we are looking at these lives and the health of these lives in a very commoditized kind of property, the trucks, the cars, the buildings, and then the health of the worker if they manifest an injury during the job.
Saul Marquez:
I had no idea.
Matt Condon:
Yeah, and most people don’t, but it is.
Saul Marquez:
That fact is kind of insane.
Matt Condon:
Fascinating, right? And it is, I think, part of the problem and I think technology is allowing us now to see how dumb that is, right? To see that, whether you manifest an injury at work or at home, that’s a productivity issue, it’s a culture issue, and it’s a cost issue. And so what we do is use that lens to optimize it, to really change it in a way that creates an exceptional experience, and allows us to partner with the providers in every zip code that we partner with employers in, and creates an environment where we can start to see who is actually healing patients at scale and then partner with those providers, direct more care to them, augment their services with digital tools, with prevention tools, to really address the marketplace from a preventative and optimizing outcomes kind of standpoint.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. Matt, I’m just shocked to hear this, and I’m sure everybody listening to this is also thinking, whoa, I never knew that. Why are these people who are working their butts off under the property section of insurance? That’s just mind-boggling. Does that need to be reformed?
Matt Condon:
I think there’s a lot of reforms that need to come forward. Payment reform, which isn’t unique just to worker’s comp, but I think in this space can be incredibly impactful. We always say there is no more meaningful a conversation that an employer has with their employees, than how they treat them and where they send them when they’re injured on the job as far as how they care about their health and wellness. If it’s a great experience, if it’s a bad experience, those deeds speak so loudly to the employer. And so I think certainly there’s regulation that we will continue to evolve. I think regardless of that, though, that’s what makes the employer stakeholder position so important because they’re just looking for value. They’re trying to find actual meaningful value, not discounts, but how do I partner with providers that have my goals as an employer in mind? And that is giving great, exceptional healthcare to my employees when they’re injured on the job and getting them back to work and back to productivity.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. It’s great to know that you guys do what you do for the people that you do it for. So can you explain this concept of hybrid care? You talked about physical therapy and also remote physical therapy and how it improves MSK, musculoskeletal, treatment for patients and workers.
Matt Condon:
We saw the pendulum swing during COVID, right? It’s almost cliche at this point that we were all very focused on onsite in-person physical care, regardless of MSK or various sectors of healthcare. COVID created this huge swing into virtual care. So we went to telehealth, we went to virtual care, where people were getting their healthcare through their iPads and computers predominantly, right? What we believe will happen is that pendulum will swing back to the middle and that will be the biggest catalyst of improved outcomes because healthcare ought to be at home, in the clinic, at the worksite, all of it. We carry our health around 24 hours a day, we ought to carry around our health and health experience 24 hours a day as well. As we’ve talked before about technology enabling that. Technology-enabled, it, previously from a point solution. Like, I had something at home I could do, I had a clinic that I could go to and I had maybe a wearable at work that I could go to, but they were never connected and they were never integrated. And so if you went and saw a care provider, he or she wouldn’t get access to the virtual side. He or she wouldn’t get access to what was happening at work, and Bardavon will change that. We will provide that experience in an integrated fashion so that when a treating provider is seeing you, he or she has access to all of that data, and again, can get to the best outcome most efficiently.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. Interoperability, the ability to meet people where they are, the care they need, at the altitude of care that’s needed.
Matt Condon:
Yeah, great healthcare decisions, strategic decisions are made at the corporate level, but great healthcare is always provided locally. And so our ability to coordinate technology with a local provider in a way that benefits the patient, I don’t just think is what we’re looking for in healthcare. I honestly believe, as MSK continues to be a major problem in this country, more and more stakeholders will see that entry point being the place to really be where change and improvement happens first and then spread to the rest of the market.
Saul Marquez:
Fantastic. What would you say are the barriers to moving MSK healthcare forward and how should we incentivize this transition to tech-enabled injury prevention and hybrid healthcare?
Matt Condon:
Inertia, I always say it’s the biggest impediment. I mean, I just think we have an archaic infrastructure of healthcare that is not built up to optimize outcomes to get the best care. And really, I even think you walk around here and what does value-based care mean? What does return on investment mean? I mean, oftentimes what we’re talking about is things that you see on the bill only, and yet we all would say that our healthcare experiences, what we really think about them is when we’re talking to the doctor, when we’re interfacing with the care provider, when we’re interfacing with our virtual experience, when we’re interfacing with our digital virtual experience, whether it be a wearable or whatever. But yet this entire industry has built up a perspective that it’s gross charges and discount, right? And I think that archaic viewpoint is going to be changed by the integration of meaningful technology and the integration of new solutions like it will come from outside, it will come from startups that will bring this model to the marketplace and create inertia as we move forward and change. And I actually think, I’m the eternal optimist in the room, I think that change will happen much faster than many people think, because once it goes, it goes. And we all, in our soul, want better healthcare experiences, and if certain groups start to bring it to market at scale, I think that that flame burns fast and quickly.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. I’m just kind of picturing this poster of you, Matt, like just with your bicep like this.
Matt Condon:
Nobody wants to see that poster.
Saul Marquez:
Representing the American worker. It’s awesome, right? I mean, like, we need this type of representation. And for all the employers out there where your people go for care matters a lot. So can you speak to navigation going for a $500 MRI versus a $5000 one?
Matt Condon:
Yeah, and so, and again, if you look at the greater healthcare space, there are so many care navigators in the commercial healthcare space, right? And we’re trying to figure out how do we incentivize a structure of which we get our associates to go to the care providers we deem to be the best. It’s a goal, it’s a wish, it’s a hope, it’s a dream. In worker’s compensation, it’s an absolute responsibility. Employers have the responsibility to take that injured associate that was injured on the job and make sure that they get to a quality care provider. But many don’t know they have that opportunity, many don’t appreciate how important it is. Historically, they haven’t, I think they are now, so that trend is certainly changing. But in the worker’s compensation segment, and this is why we believe it will be the catalyst of change in MSK care, you have rational governance, you have employer direction, employer control of care. They are injured on the job, I pay 100% of that bill, but I get to tell you where to go, or I get to influence it in some states, but most have clear direction. There’s a HIPAA waiver in all 50 states that allows me to track and report otherwise protected health information in really unique ways, and that allows us to evaluate care providers, obese 65-year-old smokers, their outcomes differently than otherwise healthy 20-year-olds. So we can start to see outcomes based off of patient co-morbidity in a really meaningful way. And maybe the most meaningful part is there is a quantifiable metric of success in MSK care in worker’s compensation. So if you and I get injured, we’ll go to a group of providers until we get tired of our co-pay or we just don’t want to go anymore. If we get hurt on the job and we work for Goodyear, we will go until we can lift a 54-pound tire to a 48-inch shelf 50 times. And so that quantifiable metric allows us for the only, I believe it’s the only place in healthcare to see a patient, we know they could do something before and now we know the set of the providers, what was done, and how long it took to get that patient back to doing something, doing that same thing again. That is the purest definition of healing in all of healthcare, and it sits in that space that represents, again, the sharp tip of the sword on the entire MSK experience around the country.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, Matt, you’ve said it so well, and a lot of this conference we’ve been focused on techequity and health equity.
Matt Condon:
Right.
Saul Marquez:
And this is like a prime example of representing a group that needs representation and bringing equity to healthcare. So I can’t thank you enough for everything that you’ve shared today. I’ve got to ask, what would you want to leave the listeners with as far as a closing thought?
Matt Condon:
I think hope, right? I mean, and I mean that in a like a cliché way, but I do believe there is a sense of inevitability about what we have built because it actually improves the outcome of the patient, because it actually partners with the provider and honors them as well. I haven’t talked about providers, but creating an environment where providers that are doing a good job, healing patients get more patients, and providers that don’t do a good job at that, don’t get patients. That is the right thing to happen, right? And employers that honor that system and buy into it, they have the best chance of creating a culture and an environment that retains great employees and continues to spur their productivity and profitability as well. And so I think it goes back to that initial question you asked about, how long does it take? I think it will happen pretty quickly. I think we’re at the precipice of really meaningful things, and that makes me get up every morning and want to do this job more.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome, Matt. Well, you guys are certainly the tip of the spear on this issue, so thank you very much. If the listeners want to learn more, where can they learn more?
Matt Condon:
www.Bardavon.com. So B A R D A V O N .com.
Saul Marquez:
Outstanding. Folks, there you have it. Make sure you go to the show notes of this episode because all the links of what we’ve talked about are there. Click on them, learn more, and most importantly, take action, don’t just listen. If something today inspired you, act on it, and looking forward to catching you on the next one. Matt, thanks for being with us.
Matt Condon:
Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
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