Partnership Expands Timely Access to Wraparound GI Care
CHICAGO, October 5, 2023 – SonarMD, the company leading value-based care enablement in digestive health, and Telebelly Health, a specialized virtual care platform for gastroenterology (GI) practices, today announced a new partnership that offers practices using SonarMD access to Telebelly Health’s services.
This combined offering gives GI practices comprehensive support, including digitally enabled patient triage, on-demand provider access, and chronic condition management, allowing specialists to expand practice capacity, focus on the most complex cases, and modernize their offerings so patients always receive high-quality care when and where they need it.
This non-exclusive collaboration brings together two physician-founded companies focused on addressing the most prevalent barriers to GI care. GI practices today face an overwhelming demand for patient care due to expanded colonoscopy screening guidelines, pandemic backlogs, and a national shortage of gastroenterologists. This can lead to life-threatening care delays, lower quality of life for patients living with chronic GI conditions, and a greater need for high-cost interventions.
SonarMD uses remote patient monitoring, algorithms and expert support to help GI practices proactively identify emerging health issues in patients with chronic gut health conditions and address problems before they escalate to a hospitalization or visit to the emergency department. This improves outcomes and lowers the overall cost of care.
“SonarMD has long been focused on helping GI practices provide timely access to digestive care, and partnering with Telebelly Health helps us take that vision one step further,” said Beth Houck, CEO of SonarMD. “Together we make it easy for GI practices to serve more patients and optimize the patient experience, while positioning practices to thrive in a digital, value-based future.”
Telebelly Health was co-founded by a gastroenterologist to address significant delays in GI screening and treatment and eliminate the everyday friction patients face when accessing GI care. The platform reduces staff burden via digital intake, routing healthy patients to directly schedule screening colonoscopies when guideline-appropriate and higher-risk patients to virtual consultations with a licensed and GI-trained Advanced Practice Provider (APP). Telebelly Health APPs also expand practice capacity by offering virtual appointments for routine conditions like GERD, dysphagia, diarrhea and constipation, thus reducing patient wait times, improving outcomes, and giving gastroenterologists more time to spend on complex cases, procedures, and growth initiatives.
“We are thrilled to join forces with SonarMD to help GI practices adopt transformative models of care delivery,” said Sheri Rudberg, CEO and co-founder of Telebelly Health. “Given the unprecedented demand for GI care today, expanding patient access is more important than ever. Delays in digestive care and colorectal cancer screening can be inconvenient, stressful and even fatal. We believe this collaboration will help innovative GI practices offer a significantly improved patient experience, meeting patients where they are to seamlessly and effectively address the full spectrum of digestive care.”
About SonarMD
SonarMD aligns incentives around the doctor-patient relationship to reimagine care for complex chronic diseases, starting in gastroenterology. Using AI technology and human support, we predict clinical deterioration in patients and make it easier for patients and specialists to work together to proactively address problems before they become health emergencies. Our approach is proven to keep people healthier and help health plans reduce costs by 15% per member per year. For more information, visit SonarMD.com.
About Telebelly Health
Telebelly Health partners with GI practices to deliver specialized virtual care on a fully integrated and staffed telehealth platform. Telebelly Health expands practice capacity with a national network of GI-trained Advanced Practice Providers (APPs), supervised by board-certified gastroenterologists. Our platform integrates directly into practice EMRs and billing processes, ensuring patients experience high-quality, seamless virtual care. Practices around the country have used Telebelly Health to reduce wait time from referral to procedure by as much as 4 to 6 months, while increasing patient and provider satisfaction. Learn more at telebelly.com.
