Podcast with Lauren Post (WG ’14) | Grand Rounds

The hot take: Grand Rounds is a San Francisco based, healthcare navigation company, mostly for self-insured employers. The company has raised over $100M since its inception and counts Walmart amongst its customers. The market for navigating healthcare benefits is growing especially as quality, particularly Provider quality, becomes key to ensuring that patients get timely access to the right care. The company is actively hiring MBAs in a variety of roles.

Outlined below are the different sections of the 30 min podcast with summary bullets. It was a pleasure getting to know Lauren!

What is Grand Rounds (0:00–5:00):

• A company that gets people to the right, high quality healthcare
• Democratize the concept of “medical insider”
• Employer-based solution, serving over 100 large employer customers, mostly self-insured (including Walmart)
• Helps employees understand their benefits, costs, find the right doctors and navigate through challenging diagnoses

How Grand Rounds is tackling Physician Quality (5:40–13:00)

• Grand Rounds is helping usher healthcare into an era of understanding quality in a much more nuanced way
• Much of the money raised has gone into data science resources to determine physician quality and building those algorithms
• Most quality metrics do not track the choice of not doing surgery, but Grand Rounds does take clinical judgement into account
• The company is not afraid to point out there is such a thing as a poor performing doctor — recognizing and driving patients away from those doctors is crucial
• There are doctors who have received sanctions, but because they are in network and on-contract between Provider Group and Insurance Carrier, patients still get sent to them! Grands Rounds is helping patients avoid that

Lauren’s role at Grand Rounds and current challenges (13:00–19:00)

• Graduate of HCM at Wharton, worked at Keas after school (company got bought)
• After the acquisition, she contacted a former Mercer (she worked there before school) and Wharton alum, who connected her to Grand Rounds
• Lauren is currently the Director of Account Management and also manages the Walmart Account
• The Account Management team at Grand Rounds has grown from 5 (since she joined) to almost 30 people
• Current challenge: it’s confusing and difficult for employees to sift through multiple health services, especially at larger companies

Trends in the healthcare navigation space (19:00–25:00)

• It’s still early in the space, employers are warming up to it
• The market is growing quickly as this service was traditionally more expensive
• One of Grand Rounds’ competitive advantages: “Answering the questions that employers don’t know to ask, especially around quality”
• Health insurance companies are trying to enter the navigation space, but it’s not clear whether they really are an objective party in this
• Companies, like Comcast, are developing a Chief Medical Officer role and there may be a growth in the sophistication of this body of knowledge on the large employer side

Hiring MBAs at Grand Rounds (25:00–30:00)

• DEFINITELY hiring (grandrounds.com/careers), the roles could change by May 2019 when MBAs graduate
• There are many roles open that could be a fit for MBAs: Both Employer and Provider-facing account management teams, marketing, product marketing, program manager, product manager, analytics manager, sales and sales strategy
• Grand Rounds does not have a formal MBA pipeline for internships or full time roles (that may evolve in the next year or so) but there are many MBA’s at Grand Rounds (including one of the founders)
• Advice: be realistic about how much of a career switch you can make (you should have a bit of experience in the role you are applying for)
• Company is based in SF but has other offices in Reno, NV and Maine (more provider-oriented roles)