Often the best companies in healthcare are the ones who don’t care to be recognized. They’re the ones working alongside their customers, patients, and physicians to do what needs to be done in the right way by their partners.
Today I’d like to introduce one such organization to Hospitalogists: The Garage.
Pranam Ben founded The Garage in April 2012, and most healthcare folk who have been around the block might remember this date as the beginning of the Medicare Shared Savings Program. Over the past 13 years in working within MSSP and every major value-based care program, The Garage has partnered with over 140 ACOs, FQHCs, IPAs, payors, health systems, and other risk-bearing organizations to drive real, tangible value. And the results speak for themselves. Since 2012 The Garage’s population health management platform has expanded to 36+ states, touching 25,000 clinicians and physicians and over 15 million patient lives.
Who is the Garage?
The garage as a space is one of inspiration, but also practicality. When I think of a garage, I think of the dad revving up his lawnmower in an effort to win his neighborhood’s Lawn of the Month. I think of the couple who just got back from Home Depot starting on their weekend warrior DIY project with love, care, and determination (hopefully to build a golf simulator). Or the college kid clearing space and getting ready for game night with his friends.
Some of the best ideas and companies were formed in garages. I think of all of the passionate founders who formed concepts for companies there – Amazon, Apple, Google, Disney, Microsoft – the list goes on. Pranam wanted his company to exemplify these ideals, but also strive for greatness every day. And so for this reason he chose to name his business The Garage.
I love the Garage’s name to death. It’s so contrarian to the rest of health tech, with slick marketing messaging with plenty of fluff, or a website to rival Apple’s, but all fluff and no depth. The Garage’s mantra is the complete opposite. At their core, The Garage is focused on results and what they’ve done for clients – not how cool they appear. And their message to their new and existing customers is clear: “we’ll head down to the garage together – getting into the nitty gritty – with you, and we’ll be supporting every step of the way.”
So with this introduction in mind, let’s dive into The Garage’s population health management platform, framework for value-based care, and what makes them different.
The Garage’s Framework for Value-Based Care: the Airport Model
No doubt the airport is a complex place, between air traffic control, pilot strikes, gate changes, lost luggage, and everything in between, so it’s a pretty great metaphor for our messy healthcare system. The Garage has a great framework for value-based care and creating a successful program: the Airport Model. This framework guides the Garage’s customers no matter where they are in their VBC journey and enables them to identify areas needing innovation or that have been overlooked, and ensures all operations are interconnected, efficient, and patient-centered.
Here’s the core principle driving the Airport Model: “if we think of the healthcare system as an airport, what’s the best way to get the patient from point A – the parking lot – to point B – their final destination? And what are the steps in between we need to enable that in the easiest possible way?”
Each terminal within the Garage’s Airport framework serves as a nexus of value-based care success: population management, reporting and analytics, patient engagement, and care coordination. At the center of these notes is the brain: the main terminal, or VBC HUB, routing appropriate information to its final destination along these nodes.
What’s fascinating is The Garage has seen customers leverage its Airport Model to drive significant savings or even catch fraud! The Garage isn’t even a fraud detection agency!! Remember that urinary catheter fraud story that broke earlier last year? The Garage was a key part of helping their partner ACO – with 60,000 members – flag the potential DME fraud and tack on $2 million in shared savings to its customer.
The Garage’s platform, Bridge, does everything you’d ask of a value-based care population health management platform to help navigate and optimize an organization’s messy ‘airport.’ So let’s take a peek under the hood how Bridge does just that.
The Garage Platform Overview: Bridge
Bridge is The Garage’s flagship population health management platform purpose-built for administrators, care teams, and providers at ACOs, FQHCs, IPAs, Health Systems, and other value-based enterprises. And Bridge was developed from the ground up with input from physicians and clinicians.
At its core, Bridge aims to aggregate as much data as possible into a normalized view for an organization – serving that data into actionable insights that the Garage fondly refers to as ‘Tiny, Tasty Morsels’ – data (notifications, point-of-care intel, etc.) that empowers care teams to make informed decisions quickly. For the data nerds in the audience, you can read more about Bridge’s digital-first, data-first architecture and approach here.
Many organizations struggle with delayed insights, siloed clinical and social data, and technology that doesn’t work with their workflows – ultimately hindering their success in value-based models. Bridge changes that, ensuring providers have access to a complete, accurate, and actionable dataset.
Bridge’s platform is an all-in-one package for care coordination, transitional care management, quality reporting, compliance, patient engagement, coding & risk adjustment, and more.
Beyond its core feature set powering and scaling VBC organizations, here’s a host of added benefits organizations get in working with Bridge:
Interoperability, EHR Agnostic: Bridge integrates with existing EHR systems, either embedded directly or via a handy browser extension and has established interfaces across 127+ EHR systems, 70+ HIEs, and 80% of payors. (once a customer asked The Garage if they could help them integrate with 22 separate EHRs – The Garage replied they’d done up to 30 before!)
Key Partnerships for Data Aggregation: The Garage prioritizes meaningful collaborations to power deeper insights. Through trusted partners like Health Gorilla (clinical and ADT data), Labcorp, Find Help, IMO Health, and Experian SDOH, they aggregate robust, multi-source data to address both clinical and social determinants impacting health. This comprehensive data foundation fuels insights across the application, driving smarter workflows, personalized interventions, and more connected care delivery.
Vendor Consolidation: For those Taylor Swift aficionados in the crowd, we’re in the era of platform-ization in healthcare, moving away from point solutions. For those tired of managing multiple technology vendors, Bridge holds one of the most comprehensive platforms on the market with 14 applications. As a result, it can replace multiple vendors and move an organization’s tech solutions to fewer contracts, saving costs and simplifying operations.
Customization and Flexibility: With 14 different applications across its 4 key value-based care pillars (advanced analytics, care management, risk and performance management, patient engagement), Bridge is HIPAA-compliant and secure, and available anytime, anywhere, on any device with a WiFi connection. Everything a provider could need to know about their patients, they have all the resources in front of them to do so. Bridge’s dashboard can mask itself based on who logs in (e.g., a care team member who needs to see one or two things vs. an administrator / executive who wants a 10,000 foot overview). Bridge can also embed into / overlay into certain EHRs.
Implementation Speed and ROI Guarantee: Imagine launching four accountable care organizations (ACOs) in just 22 days. That’s the white-glove treatment The Garage provides every new client. In one instance with a new physician enablement organization with 140+ practices and 325 physicians, The Garage onboarded Bridge in just 4 weeks!
AI Implementation: The Garage’s approach to AI is fascinating, characterizing AI as ‘applied intelligence.’ Bridge’s latest innovations, Blaze Copilot and Blazespeaks, are all about empowering their partner care teams and physicians to do more with less. The Garage believes in personal contacts and relationships – so they want to maintain patient to care manager and patient to physician relationships. They’ve designed their AI-enabled products as such:
- Blaze Copilot works as a care manager’s AI-enabled digital assistant automating repetitive and routine tasks. Again, it isn’t about replacing human interaction but enhancing it, allowing care managers to work more effectively and personally engage with patients. For instance – if a care manager has 200 patients to outreach today, what can Blaze copilot do to alleviate that burden? Can they schedule that next appointment via text? Send an email with a reminder on the prescriptions or medications the patient was hoping to take?
- Blazespeaks works as a browser plugin for decentralized access, giving care teams access to actionable insights directly within their existing workflows. Providers and care teams receive a daily briefing, longitudinal personal health profile, admits, priority patients, and care gaps.
Simple Fee Structure: Finally, Bridge isn’t your typical healthcare tech that charges hidden fees at every integration. The Garage supports its partners through Bridge with a straightforward, low monthly PMPM cost, which includes unlimited upgrades, customization, user accounts, data integration, and more. No nickel-and-diming.
All of these features and benefits surrounding Bridge drive toward a singular north star: the Quintuple Aim.
The Garage’s Results and ROI
The Garage, through Bridge, cares about results. Through their work in value-based care, they’ve helped partnered Medicare ACOs hit over $1 billion in cumulative gross savings over the last 8 years alone with 90%+ quality scores across all programs!
The Garage guarantees a financial ROI within 6 months of implementation. Their team has a wealth of experience in working with risk at-scale, across 4M+ Medicaid lives and 800k+ Medicare lives.
What does that ROI look like, though?
Rarely have I come across an organization with such readily available ROI data to include in these pieces. The Garage almost has too much! Like I said – they’re focused on results, and results they have. Here’s a sampling across their body of work (and you can see more case studies and use cases here): acknowledges both the limitations and the promise of tech-enabled care.
Closing Shop with The Garage
If you take away anything from this piece, I want it to be this: The Garage…cares. They’re a trusted partner who rolls up their sleeves, gets dirty, and helps healthcare organizations succeed in value-based care at scale. They’ve purpose-built a platform called Bridge that handles all the technical stuff – connecting different systems, making sense of messy data, and giving providers the right information at the right time. But what makes them special is how they’re laser-focused on getting results for their partners.
The Garage is not just selling software – they’re helping transform how healthcare works, one organization at a time. That’s probably why they’re crushing it with over 140 ACOs, FQHC’s, Health Systems, Payers and touching more than 15 million patient lives. Their commitment to the Quintuple Aim isn’t just buzzwords – it’s baked into everything they do.
Get in touch with The Garage today.
This essay is a sponsored post in partnership with The Garage. I write these posts for companies with products or missions I believe can provide value-adds for Hospitalogy subscribers, many of whom work with/for ACOs, FQHCs, integrated health systems, health plans, and other risk-bearing organizations that want to learn more about potential value-based care partners.
If you’re interested in a sponsored deep dive, please reach out to [email protected]!
Join my Hospitalogy Membership! If you’re a VP or Director working in strategy or corporate development at a hospital, health system or provider organization, you will get a lot of value out of my community as I purpose-build the content, fireside chats, and conversations for this group. Join for free today.