A New Approach to Weight Health
As the One Place for Health and Care, we understand that you can’t separate weight issues from health issues. That’s why we are taking a different approach to supporting our Members with a new Weight Health care experience. Our Chief Medical Officer Dr. Randy Hawkins explains and shares the Member journey.
February 15, 2024
Randy K. Hawkins, M.D., FACHE, Chief Medical Officer, Transcarent
Why Weight Health? Why Now?
Maintaining good health is a journey, not a destination. This is especially true for weight health. These journeys are extremely personal and complex, and can last a lifetime. There are stigmas to battle and diverse care needs that can be difficult to manage. With 73% of Americans facing weight struggles1, it’s clear that traditional weight management methods are not working and a new approach is needed.
Looking at Weight Health Differently
Despite its ubiquitous nature, weight health is rarely treated with a clinical approach. Temporary and fragmented quick fixes, from diet to prescriptions, often fail and add to the complexity, confusion, and cost of treatments. Within a year, 80% of people who lose weight gain it back2. This often leads to discouragement and relapse for people working toward better weight health. At Transcarent, we believe that people fighting a disease that has reached epidemic status deserve to have easy access to the highest-quality, affordable health and care from expert providers who lead with empathy.
As the One Place for Health and Care, we understand that you can’t separate weight issues from health issues. That’s why we are taking a different approach to supporting our Members with a new Weight Health care experience; an experience grounded in clinical quality and delivered in a whole-person, longitudinal fashion prioritizing personalization and sustainable change to deliver better health and affordability.
The One Place for Weight Health
When we say it’s a different approach, we mean it. This is the first Weight Health care experience that delivers lifestyle management, pharmaceutical, and surgical benefits in one place to enable individualized care. Supported by our partnership with 9amHealth, Members have easy and affordable access to personalized care plans and an integrated team of clinical weight health specialists. Together, they provide the comprehensive lifestyle management and behavioral coaching support necessary to augment any pharmaceutical treatments (including GLP-1s) or industry-leading surgical care, if needed.
It begins with a simple question to our Members: “Why is this important to you?” Then their connected provider team gets to work developing a personalized care plan for each Member, routing them to the appropriate care journey for their weight health needs, which may include some or all of the specialists. These plans are informed by bidirectional data sharing and predictive modeling based on medical history, prescription claims data, and patient self-reported data to help determine the best approach to care and to aid in the design of value-based arrangements with those who pay for care.
On-demand care teams guide Members at each step, helping them make the next best decision for their weight health and care. Like other care experiences at Transcarent, there is never a one-size-fits-all approach. Our Members can be confident that they have a personalized plan with targeted resources to address their unique needs.
High-Quality, Personalized Care is Driving Change
As with any chronic condition, the best outcomes are realized when people are engaged in their care. That’s why Transcarent Weight Health Members have access to provider teams and high-quality specialists, all available via text, video, phone, or in-person.
Based on individual need, and accessed via one easy-to-use platform, Members have access to high-quality board-certified obesity medicine specialists, endocrinologists, registered dietician nutritionists, physical therapists, nurses, behavioral specialists, specialty pharmacists, and bariatric surgeons from Transcarent Surgery Center of Excellence program. Since no two weight health journeys are alike, these providers align on each Member’s personalized care plan. They work together with the shared goal of helping Members achieve a healthy weight while engaging them with the tools they need to maintain that weight and good health for the long-term. This approach has been working, resulting in a 12.2% average weight loss over 7 months and 2.8% average reduction a month in Members with A1c > 9%3.
With the World Obesity Federation’s prediction that more than one billion people will be affected by weigh health issues by 2030, it’s time to shift expectations and rethink ingrained approaches to care by helping people create the individualized, healthy, lasting change they need. We can transform the narrative from disease, obesity and siloed sick care to a culture that is supportive of individual weight health needs, reverses longstanding stigmas, and gives people what they need on their journey to sustained good health.
1 CDC FastStats: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
2National Library of Medicine, Long-term weight loss maintenance, Wing RR, Phelan S. Long-term weight loss maintenance. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Jul;82(1 Suppl):222S-225S. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/82.1.222S. PMID: 16002825. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16002825/