A few months ago, when the Academy asked 30 high-level strategy executives which of 25 possible revenue diversification strategies their system was prioritizing for strategic growth, there was one clear leader: over 70% were focused on direct-to-employer bundles. Of these systems, 48% expected to substantially invest in bundles in the next year (and 24% in the next 2-3 years).

The result was surprising to us since, just six months before, only 30% of a similar group of organizations reported piloting or operating a DTE bundle, with 60% planning to try so in the future. While of course the respondents were not identical, it underscored a trend to us: many systems have started piloting or executing on bundles this past year. Yet, at the same time, we’ve also heard about many of the challenges of growing DTE services in the past few months. Key challenges include network adequacy for increasingly national employers, pushing employee uptake, getting traction with local brokers and, internally, getting system-wide buy-in for operational changes.

We also have heard that many have been looking to build their bundle programs internally, with 67% of strategy leaders building de novo as opposed to 33% looking to partner. Therefore, we were intrigued in October, when we heard about employee healthcare navigation startup Transcarent partnering with ten health systems on a new value-based surgery bundle program (which we wrote about briefly then).

Since then, we’ve been keen to learn more about their approach. So, for this week’s edition of The Strategist, we spoke with Transcarent CEO Glen Tullman about his vision for healthcare and got his pitch on why large health systems should consider joining his company’s new provider ecosystem. In our conversation, excerpted below, Tullman emphasized Transcarent’s focus on picking high-quality LHS partners who are willing to contract at pricing competitive or below those they have with major payers and offer preferred access in exchange for same-day payments. Read on for more details.