Echo Health Ventures advisor Dr. Lisa Bielamowicz and Dr. Jeff Wessler, CEO of Echo portfolio company Heartbeat Health, discussed health care trends and cardiology innovation, respectively, on recent episodes of the Regence HealthChangers podcast.

The HealthChangers podcast is produced by Regence health plans, whose parent company is Echo founding partner Cambia Health Solutions.

In his podcast episode, Dr. Wessler appeared with William Krenz, senior vice president of government programs for Regence, to discuss how Heartbeat and Regence are working together to boost heart health and cardiac care for Regence members. 

Heartbeat Health, a virtual-first cardiology provider, is now available for most Regence Medicare and Regence commercial members.  The partnership is an example of how Echo portfolio companies and Echo member health plans collaborate to use innovation to improve the health care experience.  

“Heartbeat can intervene years before that index cardiac event occurs; that saves lives, but it also reduces the enormous burden of cardiovascular disease on our system today,” Dr. Wessler said on the podcast. “And the way we do this is to partner directly with both health plans and providers to identify members who are at high risk for these cardiac events, or who have recently experienced a cardiac event, and then get in front and care for these patients.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Bielamowicz, a nationally recognized health care strategist and physician leader, said in her podcast episode that hospitals and health systems face steep challenges. Hospitals still are managing budget problems and rising costs post-COVID, as well as national economic uncertainty and political changes on the federal level.

But there is innovation on the horizon.

“One of the other things that the pandemic did is we had fantastic innovation in digital health and of course on the vaccine side. But it has felt for a lot of the last decade, like technology in health care, the innovation curve had kind of flattened a little bit,” said Dr. Bielamowicz on the podcast. “It feels like it’s back now and that we’re seeing a new spate of treatments for diseases that are going to have a real impact for consumers. Now, a lot of those bring new costs, particularly on the pharmaceutical side; but for organizations who can figure out how to weave those into care pathways and a broader service offering, there’s a lot of potential there.”