Lantern secures $30M

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Lantern Secures $30M

The news
Lantern, a specialty care platform, has secured $30 million in funding, which will help it expand across employers and health plans, the company announced on Thursday.

The company
Dallas, Texas-based Lantern directs members of health plans and self-insured employers to the top-performing local providers for surgery, cancer treatment, infusion care or other medical needs. It serves more than 1,000 clients in the U.S.

The funding
The $30 million raise was led by Morgan Health, a JPMorganChase business unit focused on employer-sponsored healthcare, as well as Echo Health Ventures, a strategic investment platform that invests on behalf of multiple Blues health plans. The funding will be used to reinvest in three areas: technology, go-to-market and partnerships, according to John Zutter, CEO of Lantern.

Soundbite
"Specialty care is a primary driver of health care costs and contributes to the double-digit price escalation that most employers are experiencing. On top of that, consumers are increasingly frustrated with the lack of tools to navigate their conditions and are looking to their employers to ease this burden," said Dan Mendelson, CEO of Morgan Health, in a statement. "Lantern's ability to improve outcomes and lower costs supports a healthier, more engaged workforce – and we're committed to accelerating their impact."

— By Marissa Plescia

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Why Providence Wants to Sell Its Health Plan

The skinny
Providence announced this week that it wants to sell its health plan, signaling its desire to exit the "payvider" club.

Being a payvider — an organization that both provides healthcare services and operates an insurance plan — has long been hailed as a key way for health systems to control costs. But it's turning out that the financial benefits are difficult to capture for smaller, regional plans facing rising costs and higher utilization.

Providence's motivation
"Regional health plans across the country are under increasing pressure from rising costs, including prescription drugs, constraints on premium affordability and significant technology demands. Providence said organizations with larger platforms can improve long-term stability and support innovation," the health system said in a statement.

Last year, Providence Health Plan posted a $102 million net loss on $2.5 billion in revenue.

The broader trend
Providence's decision to offload its struggling health plan is not an isolated case. For instance, Indiana University Health sold its health plan to Elevance Health in 2024, and Michigan Medicine shut down its health plan at the end of last year.

These moves reflect a broader recalibration in healthcare, said Josh Berlin, CEO of rule of three, a healthcare consulting firm. As market pressures intensify, both providers and insurers are increasingly focusing on their core businesses rather than trying to operate across both sides of the industry, he explained.

"It certainly begs the question then of how much more successful would a provider and a plan be if they focused on partnering and joint venture strategies, which a number of have done very successfully, so that strength could meet strength — maybe a far better way to bring benefit to the communities they serve," Berlin stated.

— By Katie Adams

4 SXSW Perspectives on Boosting Trust In Tech

Innovations need to be invisible
Simon Nazarian, chief technology and digital officer of City of Hope, a NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center and research organization, talked about how any new technological innovation needs to be invisible and retain human wisdom. He explained how providers were so overwhelmed when technology reduced the cognitive burden that they gave a "hug in the hallway." For patients, onboarding at any new provider cancer facility is burdensome, and many times they have to repeat their entire medical histories." City of Hope's Gen AI tool - Hope LLM — aims to remove that by being able to surface information rapidly without the need for patient input.

Merck's Red Chair Campaign
The pharmaceutical giant launched an internal campaign with a visible red chair in rooms as a reminder of the importance of always thinking about the patient. That is a deliberate effort to always remember the patient perspective, given that in corporate settings, sometimes that may be lost.

The red chair is meant to remind people to get back to the fundamentals of making sure the patient is at the center," said Josette Gbemudu, associate vice president of patient health innovation at Merck. "So, as opposed to what's good for the company, what's good for the patient, getting back to the problem statement at hand."

Peer support
A patient and a digital health innovator both pointed to the importance of peers in boosting trust in technology. Alex Bell, a breast cancer survivor and Reddit moderator and founder of a topic group within the platform, talked about how personalized advice from other patients helped her tackle her own breast cancer diagnosis at the age of only 32.

Katie Dressar, CEO of RockHealth.org, noted how peer support can have a significant effect on boosting trust by highlighting the promising early results of a Rock Health portfolio company called Marigold Health. The company uses AI to help peer-to-peer support in the mental health and addiction recovery space. So far, 2000 patients who used the platform reported "a 98% recovery," she said.

Ending the Voicemail Bottleneck: How Voice AI Is Transforming Patient Access

Voicemail as a barrier
Patients actively avoid it. Studies show that 80% of them will not leave a message, often resulting in missed scheduling opportunities or delays in receiving care. Voicemail was once primarily associated with after-hours access, but rising demand is increasingly exposing patients to the same experience during business hours. Long wait times and unanswered calls are becoming the norm, and projections suggest that this trend will continue.

Agentic AI can help
The good news is that we're ushering in a new wave of agentic AI designed to meet this challenge head-on — essentially eliminating the need for voicemail. Beyond simply recording or transcribing messages to lower call volumes, truly autonomous voice AI puts patients in the driver's seat of their own healthcare. It processes patient requests and information immediately and integrates actionable insights into the EHR, speeding next steps for clinicians and patients.

The success of any voice AI solution, however, depends on a thoughtful strategy — one that considers the following three steps for achieving intelligent, patient-driven access.

Three key steps
First, identify clinical workflows where voice AI can assist. Secondly, identify low-complexity, routine calls. Many provider organizations will find that a sizable portion of their calls are routine scheduling requests. With the right voice AI and self-scheduling solution in place, these low-complexity calls can be routed outside of the front office or healthcare call centers to be handled directly by the patient. And finally, design strategies to deflect high-volume, low-complexity calls. After identifying lower-complexity calls, providers can deploy voice AI capabilities to deflect routine interactions. and better optimize administrative capacity.

As patients are accustomed to using voice technology across other industries in their daily lives, there is a significant opportunity to bring voice AI into intelligent access models in healthcare. Doing so benefits all stakeholders.

— By MedCity Influencer David Dyke

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Lantern secures $30M