|
|
|
|
Tuesday, 28 October 2025 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
At-home testing’s evolution |
|
|
| It had been years since I last saw Julia Cheek in person. |
| Cheek, the CEO of at-home testing company Everlywell, reminded me when I last saw her in 2019 the company was making about $40 million in revenue from its cash-pay business. Then the Covid-19 pandemic, of course, completely upended the at-home testing market. |
| But more recently, Everlywell made headlines when a court ordered Walgreens to pay the company $1 billion as part of a dispute around Covid-19 tests. Walgreens ultimately paid Everlywell $595 million, but the lawsuit factored into the price at which Sycamore Partners took the retail pharmacy private. |
| That outcome sets Everlywell up with a lot of cash as it pushes deeper into what it’s been working on over the last three years: helping health plans, through testing and telehealth visits, close care gaps that influence how much plans get paid by the government. Today, Cheek told me, Everlywell is mostly a payer business, rather than a direct-to-consumer business. (In 2021, Everlywell bought Home Access Health and PWNHealth as part of that push.) |
| The initial idea for it came when the head of star ratings at Humana saw Cheek on “Shark Tank” in 2017, then reached out to set up a pilot to close care gaps important to those star ratings, a measure of health plan quality. |
| “If we really want to have the maximum impact for the maximum number of people, we have to be able to go this path,” Cheek said to me at HLTH, where we caught up earlier this month. |
| Next, Cheek said, Everlywell is looking to add cancer screenings like multi-cancer early detection tests and colon cancer screenings to the services it offers. |
| - Lydia |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Insured |
|
26993 |
The average annual family premiums for employer sponsored health insurance rose to nearly $27,000, according to an October survey from KFF. The average family premiums increased by 6% compared to 2024, KFF found. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
John Carroll
|
|
Editor & Founder
|
|
|
Arsalan Arif
|
|
Publisher & Founder
|
|
|
|
|
Igor Yavych
|
|
Architect & Founder
|
|
|
Valentin Manov
|
|
Creative Director
|
|
|
|
Ryan McRae
|
|
Chief Revenue Officer
|
|
|
Amanda Florez
|
|
Chief of Staff
|
|
|
|
|
Drew Armstrong
|
|
Executive Editor
|
|
|
Liam Chua
|
|
Chief Technical Officer
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lydia R. Pflanzer
|
|
Deputy Editor
|
|
|
|
|
Zachary Brennan
|
|
Senior Editor
|
|
|
|
|
Julie O'Meara
|
|
Executive Director, Brand Partnerships
|
|
|
Melissa Nazzaro
|
|
Executive Director, Brand Partnerships
|
|
|
|
|
| |
