Health & Biotech

U.S. Renal Care, the nation's largest privately-held and fastest-growing kidney care provider, is proud to announce that it has been recognized by Newsweek as one of America's Greatest Workplaces for Diversity and America's Greatest Workplaces for Women for two years in a row, receiving five-star ratings in both categories.

U.S. Renal Care is committed to fostering an inclusive culture that values diversity and equity at all levels of the organization. Chairman and CEO, Mark Caputo, commented on the achievement, "Our mission to provide exceptional care to those living with kidney disease is intrinsically linked to our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is important because we know that when patients and caregivers see themselves in one another, better care can be delivered, and better quality can be achieved. The recognition by Newsweek is particularly meaningful because it originates from the positive experiences of our team members who dedicate their lives to caring for others."

Over the past five years, U.S. Renal Care has significantly increased its representation of women and people of color in leadership positions, more than doubling diversity at the senior leadership level.

Dr. Sarrah Johnson, DNP, MBA, RN, U.S. Renal Care Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, and Senior Vice President of Operations, added, "At U.S. Renal Care, our strength lies in our ability to reflect the diversity of the communities we serve, ensuring equitable opportunities both as a provider of healthcare and as an employer nationwide. This focus ensures every aspect of our work aligns the needs of our patients and team members."

When selecting U.S. Renal Care as one of America's Greatest Workplaces for Diversity in 2024, Newsweek examined over 1.5 million company reviews on topics related to corporate culture and working environment. To determine America's Greatest Workplaces for Women, more than 142,000 female employees were surveyed on key equality issues for women such as proactive management of a diverse workforce, compensation and benefits, training and career progression, work-life balance, and company culture.

Everise, among the fastest-growing global healthcare services outsourcing companies, has been named one of the top 30 best places to work in 2024 by Business Intelligence Group (BIG). Everise is one of only two companies in the 'Large Business' category named to the list. The accolade was awarded after a survey assessing employee satisfaction, performance, and company culture was conducted amongst its workforce.

In today's evolving work landscape, employee satisfaction and engagement are paramount. BIG recognizes companies prioritizing these metrics to cultivate thriving workforces and achieve superior business results. BIG's Best Places to Work 2024 honors organizations fostering exceptional employee experiences and driving exceptional performance through vibrant and engaging work environments. The accolade is awarded only to companies scoring high enough in a third party-conducted employee survey measuring employee, job, and workplace satisfaction.

"It is an honor for Everise to be named a Best Place to Work by the Business Intelligence Group. This award reflects our unwavering commitment to fostering a people-first culture that is empowering, inclusive, and innovative. Our dedicated team's passion and collaboration are the driving force behind our success. I would like to congratulate and appreciate all our champs and leaders for making Everise a great place to come to work at every day," shared Sudhir Agarwal, Founder & CEO, Everise.

"We are thrilled to celebrate these outstanding organizations," declared Maria Jimenez, Chief Nominations Officer of Business Intelligence Group. "The 2024 Best Places to Work exemplify a deep commitment to employee development, fostering careers, knowledge, and performance excellence."

In honor of Certified Nurses Day, health tech company Carta Healthcare®, whose mission is to harness the value of clinical data, released the results of a survey about the pain points that healthcare professionals are currently experiencing. The survey also reveals their hope that new technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) could help combat burnout and the nurse shortage.

Carta Healthcare’s February 2024 survey of 500 U.S. healthcare workers found that they consider the biggest threats to the healthcare industry are high care costs (74.3%), the nurse shortage (63.1%), and the lack of personnel to care for the aging population (58.6%). These results align with a Carta Healthcare October 2022 healthcare consumer survey, where consumer respondents agreed that high costs and lack of personnel were among the top concerns.

“On Certified Nurses Day, we thank the nurses and practitioners who are on the front lines day in and day out, fighting for our health and wellness. These survey results show that the labor shortages have been increasingly challenging for the well-being of staff, causing burnout for over half of healthcare professionals today. The results also reveal confidence that technology such as AI can help. Carta Healthcare is dedicated to improving patient outcomes and helping nurses do their administrative work more efficiently, freeing their time to instead spend with patients, which we know is most important to them,” said Carta Healthcare CEO Brent Dover.

According to consumers in the Carta Healthcare October 2022 healthcare consumer survey, overwhelming paperwork seems to be a leading cause of healthcare burnout. When polling healthcare workers, however, over half (58%) say that being short staffed is the biggest factor for burnout, followed by low pay and long hours (46.6%). Healthcare professionals also cite the following reasons for burnout:

• Quality of care has declined (27.9%)
• Personnel issues (27.5%)
• Quality of necessary supplies and equipment (26.3%)
• Lack of leadership (23.9%)
• Admin/paperwork (22.3%)
• Politics/ bureaucracy and red tape (20.9%)

In the October 2022 consumer healthcare survey, 62% of consumers said they have a generally positive experience with the healthcare system in the U.S. However, across the board, consumers felt that wait times during healthcare visits have become longer (46%). In response to those consumer survey results, healthcare workers admit that the catalyst is a lack of staff. Thirty-five percent (35.1%) of respondents want to say, “We are doing the best we can with the little staff we have.” Similarly, 27.9% would say, “If we don’t increase healthcare staff this year, patients can expect to see more and longer wait times.”

Job satisfaction issues

Knowing what they know now, a third (37.1%) of healthcare workers say they would choose another career path. When healthcare professionals were asked if they were to leave their current position, what likely would be the reason(s), responses align with the pain points that are causing burnout:

• Low pay and long hours (53.8%)
• Short-staffed facilities (45.4%)
• Lack of leadership (31.5%)
• Personnel issues (31.3%)

Healthcare workers similarly identified several factors that could increase their job satisfaction, including higher pay (65.3%), more staffing to limit the burden (48.2%), the ability to have more time for direct patient care (32.1%), and technological advancements to help them do their jobs (29.1%).

The post-pandemic workload

Over half of respondents feel that their health systems are just as strained — if not more — than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a quarter (29.3%) say that their workload feels just as heavy as it was during the pandemic, while 23.3% say it is even heavier.

New technologies to combat the threat of labor shortages

Healthcare professionals hope that the AI-induced efficiencies, as demonstrated by other industries, will spill over to healthcare to help reduce the impact of worker shortages. Between healthcare workers and consumers, however, positive perceptions and awareness of AI in healthcare seem to differ.

The vast majority of healthcare workers (86.1%) feel they have a good understanding of how AI is used in healthcare, compared to only 57% of consumer respondents in the Carta Healthcare August 2023 healthcare AI consumer survey.

Although nearly three-quarters (73.1%) of healthcare professionals report knowing if they are actively using AI in their health practice, this isn’t common knowledge for consumers. According to Carta Healthcare’s August 2023 healthcare AI consumer survey, nearly the same percentage (71%) of consumers don’t know whether or not their healthcare providers use AI. This suggests a need for education around emerging technologies as it relates to the public’s healthcare.

Healthcare workers and consumers agree on one point regarding AI: They have trust issues. Just over one-third (36.7%) of healthcare workers say they trust AI in healthcare. Similarly, only 38% of consumers trust AI in healthcare. This underscores the need to always have a human subject matter expert (SME) in the loop to review AI results and make decisions; AI should never be trusted to make healthcare decisions or present information to a patient without SME review.

Despite reasonable AI trust issues that can be addressed with human review, the vast majority (85.3%) of healthcare professionals believe AI can help improve patients’ healthcare experience, and more than three-quarters (76.9%) think that AI could be useful to help combat labor shortages. Healthcare workers cite specific AI use cases that have already helped the most to combat labor shortages, such as AI for data analytics, entry, and management for clinical documentation (73.9%), followed by AI/automated tools to reduce duplicate paperwork (65.7%).

The new healthcare technologies that healthcare workers are most excited about include:

• Medical imagery to spot early diseases (55.6%)
• Technology to facilitate data entry and paperwork to reduce the administrative burden (52.2%)
• Diagnostic expediency for better patient outcomes (49%)

Vivup, a leading provider of world-class health and wellbeing benefits, and Perkbox, an award-winning global benefits and reward platform, announced an agreement to combine and a strategic majority investment from Great Hill Partners, a growth equity firm that invests in high-growth, disruptive companies. This brings together combined strengths with the goal of offering a truly market leading solution for the UK’s public and private employee benefits sectors. Great Hill Partners’ investment will help the newly strengthened organisation scale its go-to-market capabilities, innovate product offerings, and accelerate organic and inorganic growth opportunities. Omni Partners (“Omni”), a lower mid-market focused investor in UK private companies, invested in Vivup in 2022 and will retain a minority stake to continue supporting the combined company’s growth. The agreed transaction is subject to Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) authorisation.

Vivup and Perkbox are powered by a global team of professionals, together supporting over 4 million employees across almost 7,500 organisations. This includes over 85% of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), helping improve the lives of its people via leading employee wellbeing, benefits, engagement, and recognition & reward solutions. Powered by complementary expertise, this newly integrated proposition of world class products will be instrumental in supporting more organisations and their employees across Europe and APAC. Vivup brings a strong heritage and expertise of working with the public sector providing leading wellbeing, family care, and product expertise in Salary Sacrifice Benefits, giving employers tools to connect their workforce and help their people thrive. Perkbox is a leader in Employee Discount Schemes and Reward and Recognition technology that enables organisations to better motivate and financially support their employees. Vivup and Perkbox brings together two like minded organisations with an aligned mission and set of values that will help employers to better care for, connect with and celebrate their employees.

Day-to-day executive leadership will remain consistent across the combined businesses with Vivup CEO Simon Moyle serving as the newly formed company’s Group CEO, and Perkbox CEO Doug Butler serving as Group executive chairman. After 20 years in management and leadership roles delivering innovation and development in the UK retail services market, Moyle has spent the past five years leading the transformation and rapid growth of Vivup into the market leading employee benefits provider it is today. He has led Vivup to achieve record growth and created an award-winning culture that is people centric and empowering. Butler, who became Perkbox’s CEO in December 2023, brings over 30 years of leadership experience, having run businesses across the technology, telecommunications and the employment engagement sectors. Butler is a long-time executive working with Great Hill, most recently as CEO of former Great Hill portfolio company Reward Gateway, a global HR technology and employee engagement company. Great Hill Partners’ Drew Loucks, Chris Busby and Mats Heimes will join the company’s Board of Directors.

Simon Moyle said: “It is amazing to bring these two great organisations together. Pending FCA approval, we will be in the best possible position to support people and organisations across the UK in a very special and unique way. It is rare to find a combination such as Vivup and Perkbox where between us, we have the leading products needed across voluntary benefits, wellbeing and recognition and reward, yet very little overlap in the areas in which we currently operate. When I joined Vivup over five years ago, our team consisted of 17 people. Since then, our team has expanded significantly to almost 400 and with the addition of our Perkbox colleagues, we will now be over 500 strong. I am so proud of every member of our team and cannot wait to welcome our new Perkbox colleagues and support over 4,500 organisations. These last five years have been amazing but our future as a combined company is going to be even better!”

"Bringing the combined resources and technical product and support capabilities of Vivup and Perkbox together will be boon to the thousands of public and private sector clients and millions of employee users who rely on our solutions to meet their needs and challenges," added Doug Butler. "I've always admired Vivup's mission and growth under Simon's leadership and, now supported by Great Hill as an investor, our complementary technology, service offerings and people centric cultures create a perfect combination to support HR professionals and their people."

Great Hill Managing Director Drew Loucks noted: “Today’s exciting milestone creates a new industry player that is well-positioned to capitalise on a large and growing market opportunity. Doug and Simon both have strong track records of scaling industry-leading businesses by creating successful, client-centric cultures and innovative product offerings. We are excited to support the teams and bring Vivup and Perkbox together to deliver a more powerful employee wellbeing, benefits and engagement platform in the UK.”

Charles Gallagher-Powell, Partner at Omni added: “This deal validates our strategy of partnering with mission-led, fast-growing businesses to help push them to greater heights. Recognising these attributes in Vivup, plus a shared ambition and culture, drove our decision to invest in 2022. We’ve loved every minute of working with Simon and the team since then. We couldn’t be prouder of what Vivup has achieved and are excited to support the new combined entity as a minority shareholder.”