To mark this milestone, we are celebrating some exciting announcements that will change the healthcare game forever.

The New Sana Care

At Sana, one of our core values is “Build the Future.” That means that we focus on creating the best possible healthcare solutions from the ground up, not just tinkering with existing ones. And that’s exactly what we’ve accomplished with our latest offering. About a month ago, we rolled out a care service that allows Sana members to understand what care they need and which high quality providers they should get it from, all with just a few clicks.

Sana Care is a free, all-inclusive medical practice that will be seamlessly integrated into every Sana Benefits plan. We diagnose, treat, and manage concerns completely virtually. By the end of 2024 every Sana plan will include the support of a concierge medical team that is at the member’s side every step of the care journey to ensure they’re never navigating benefits alone and always getting the care they need when they need it. Our team of doctors, care navigators, and care managers, will work to diagnose, treat, and coordinate the best personalized care – no appointments necessary. 

We built Sana Care because as a team of industry professionals, we knew there was a smarter way to make healthcare truly accessible. Our goals for Sana Care are to give you:

• Convenient, accessible care: Members get care from their personal team of experts without having to wait weeks for the next available appointment or hours at Urgent Care.
• Patient-centered care: Members will have a team of healthcare professionals who get to know them and their health over time.
• A place you can always find the care you need: We act as a starting point for all member’s healthcare needs.
• Healthcare that’s so easy to use you never hesitate: Navigating today’s labyrinthine healthcare system is not a member’s job, it’s ours.

Sana Care was rolled out in select Texas metro areas earlier this Summer, and members are loving it. Because our care model project manages health conditions over time by a consistent team, we’re finding that 80-90% of all primary care issues can be diagnosed and treated by our team entirely online, without an in-person visit. We can’t wait until this offering is available to every adult on a Sana plan. The future of healthcare is here, and we are thrilled to be at the forefront of this revolution.

A Growing Network of Quality Providers

Sana’s rapidly growing network now boasts over 1.7 million provider locations, making it easy for members to find care in-network, at any time. Through our recent partnership with Prime Health Network, one of the largest PPO networks in the country, we increased our number of contracted provider locations by over 40%, giving our members access to provider locations through both Prime and HealthSmart networks. Members also always have access to our $0 Care Partners such as Ginger for virtual mental health, Sword for virtual physical therapy, and Blueberry for virtual pediatric care. 

What’s more, our commitment to providing comprehensive access to quality care extends beyond our in-network providers. Sana’s openness to offer fair reimbursement rates to out-of-network providers without charging members any out-of-network fees continues to be a win-win. In fact, 87% of out-of-network providers agree to take Sana and can bill us directly. We also have a number of new Flex Care Options.

Maximizing Care Partners

As part of our Sana network we have an ecosystem of virtual $0 provider offerings that range in services from mental health services, to physical therapy, to children and family care. These provider offerings – formerly known as our “Sana Care” ecosystem – have been rebranded as Care Partners to better reflect their place in our members’ many healthcare options. These providers are true partners in making sure all of our members’ health concerns are heard and treated.

We work directly with these Care Partners to ensure members have a great experience, including: easy access, lower cost, better outcomes, and friendly, proactive outreach. These partnerships are critical in our mission of making quality healthcare accessible, affordable, and understandable for all. 

So here’s to six years of relentless dedication to transforming healthcare and making it more understandable, accessible, and affordable for everyone. We can’t wait to see what the future holds as we continue to innovate. Cheers to the next six!

Related: What can small business owners do for health insurance?

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But there are many compelling reasons to take the leap with Sana Benefits. We offer technology-driven health insurance plans to small and medium-sized businesses at lower prices than the legacy carriers — without sacrificing quality. 

If you’re considering Sana Benefits right now, we wanted to explain why countless small businesses have chosen us for dependable health benefits for their employees. Here are ten facts and figures about Sana that show we’re the real deal.

Sana Benefits is legit because…

1. We are backed by a trusted insurer with a top rating. 

We are backed by Benchmark Insurance Company, which has been assigned a Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent) by AM Best.

2. We are funded by the most innovative venture capital firms. 

We just raised $60 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Trust Ventures and Gigafund – bringing our total raised to $107 million since 2017. 

3. Our customer satisfaction rating is 95%. 

Health insurance is complicated, so we ensure our customers can get their questions answered quickly by a real person. Our Member Advocate team can be reached via phone, email, or chat; their average response time is less than two minutes. 

4. 9 out of 10 businesses renew with us for another year. 

When surveyed, 78% of plan administrators said Sana was better than their previous health insurance company – mainly consisting of the legacy carriers like Blue Cross, United, Aetna, etc.

5. We never charge out-of-network fees. 

Sana’s health plans are all-access, which means that we consider all providers in-network and process claims submitted by any provider. Your employees will love not having to switch doctors when you enroll with Sana. 

We use the HealthSmart network, which includes over 1.2 million locations in the U.S. But if your doctor isn’t already in the Sana HealthSmart network, we will reach out to them and add them for you. 90% of providers accept our invitation, and we ensure you get the care you need from the providers you choose.  

6. We pay providers quickly and fairly. 

The reason so many providers accept our invitation to join the Sana network is because we offer them fair reimbursements, fast — within four days on average. We use the fair-value reimbursement model to determine payment amounts, which means you pay a reasonable price for care. Our provider satisfaction score is 97%. 

 7. You don’t need to be an HR expert to use our admin dashboard. 

Our intuitive dashboard makes it simple for plan administrators to add/terminate employees, approve new enrollees, see claims spending, reconcile invoices, and run reports — all in just a few clicks. We know that many small businesses have lean or nonexistent HR teams, so we built our product to make health benefits management as streamlined as possible. 

8. Unlike legacy carriers, we were custom-built for small and medium-sized businesses. 

We designed our business model specifically to fill the gap we saw in the healthcare industry: businesses with 5 to 500 employees. Small and medium businesses are not well served by the big-name carriers who hold the lion’s share of the market. They often charge small businesses much more than they would charge a large company for an identical health insurance plan simply because small employers lack the buying power of large firms. 

9. We can save you up to 20% compared to legacy carriers.

We use a handful of cost-cutting measures to ensure real savings for your business without ever asking you to compromise quality. For instance, we offer level-funded plans that provide immediate cost savings with no risk of paying more than budgeted. We also partner with Smith Rx, a transparent pharmacy benefits manager that passes through all rebates and discounts, thus lowering drug prices. And the fair-value reimbursement model mentioned above means we work with providers to determine a fair cost for care. 

10. Our plans cover everything legacy insurers cover — and we give members free access to virtual care and in-person providers that can take their healthcare to the next level.

We believe in a holistic approach to health. We want to help members prevent health problems and manage conditions — not just treat symptoms. 

That’s why we offer no-cost virtual appointments for primary care, pediatric care, maternity care, health coaching, mental health services, physical therapy, and more. We also partner with providers to offer our members $0: lab work, fitness classes, medical imaging, second opinions, medical equipment, surgeries, and complex condition management. 

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Here’s a quick rundown of some of what we accomplished in 2021.

Mission: Affordable Healthcare

Our members had over 80,000 claims submitted in the last year, and we take on the responsibility of ensuring they are getting fair pricing from providers. We reduced the cost of those medical bills by $88 million to ease out-of-pocket expenses and keep the cost of premiums down for employers in the coming years. 

Sana’s model enabled us to offer flat renewal rates to 74% of our business customers that trusted us to provide health insurance to their employees. Compare that to our Employer Health Insurance Report findings, where 68% of small business leaders said they received a significant rate increase from other insurers. 

Lower premiums also allow for more access. 35% of businesses that joined Sana in 2021 are offering health insurance to their employees for the first time.

Mission: Understandable Healthcare

We updated our open enrollment and onboarding process to ensure employees and their families have the information they need to make the best choice when picking a health plan. Our members now receive comprehensive welcome kits in the mail, highlighting care options and ways to get the most out of their benefits.  

We also send personalized, automated emails and text messaging to help members understand and use the benefits available to them.

Mission: Accessible Healthcare

We aim to make healthcare more accessible to our members, no matter where they live. We’ve expanded our ecosystem of Sana Care providers to give members access to high-quality, no-cost care that is proven to deliver better health outcomes. 

Including:

Blueberry Pediatrics
$0 virtual pediatric visits, allowing members to call, text, or video with a pediatrician 24/7.

DispatchHealth
At-home urgent care, coming directly to members the same day so they can stay home and recover safely.

2nd.MD
Expert second opinions with board-certified, leading doctors across the country via video or phone.

SWORD Health
Virtual musculoskeletal therapy through clinically-validated programs for all major MSK issues and prevention.

LabCorp
Free labs at any of LabCorp’s 2000+ locations.

Sana MD

In June, we announced our plan to open Sana MD, a health center that will provide primary care at no cost to members on most Sana plans in Austin. Sana MD is a joint venture between Sana and Proactive MD, a national leader in Advanced Primary Care. With a modern, spa-like design, onsite patient advocacy services, complex diagnosis management solutions, and an emphasis on building the patient-provider relationship, the health center will go far beyond the boundaries of traditional primary care. It will operate under a value-based care model, incentivizing better care and improved outcomes rather than the volume of patient visits and procedures. 

Growth

It’s been another year of growth for us, as Sana serves 2.5x more small businesses than we did a year ago. We’ve also entered three new states: Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma. Sana has scaled up hiring to keep up with demand, going from 98 to 142 employees over the last year. 

In October, we announced our latest round of funding – a Series A extension of $20 million. That capital will help Sana scale as we move into new states and invest in key elements of our value-based care approach. 

New leadership

Jaime Moran joined Sana as our first Chief Product Officer. Jaime has helped design, build, evaluate, scale, and lead a range of products and services that have improved healthcare quality and outcomes, lowered cost, and improved consumer experience across Aetna (now CVS), Walgreens, Blue Plans, Yaro (acquired by Virgin Pulse) and several other Venture-backed startups.

Nohemi Feltl also joined us as Sana’s first Director of Engineering. Nohemi has held software engineering leadership roles over the last 15+ years and has extensive experience working in the healthcare industry at United Health Group and Hennepin Healthcare. Sana’s Product-Engineering leadership team is now 50% female and 38% underrepresented minorities. 

JD Dowling is our new VP of Sales, leading the charge in bringing Sana to as many small businesses as possible. JD spent the last 3+ years as a sales leader at SaaS management company BetterCloud and has benefits experience from his time at Justworks. JD will be a key figure in our success as Sana continues to grow and enter new markets in 2022.

We’ve also brought on additional leaders in Sales, Operations, and more, as Sana scales to meet the needs of our business customers.

Provider relationships

Healthcare providers loved working with us in 2021: our provider satisfaction score is over 97%. Sana works with thousands of providers nationwide, and our team is committed to making that process as smooth as possible. We enabled chat functionality to allow providers to ask questions, check eligibility, and more at a moment’s notice.  

Getting claims paid quickly and correctly is critical to maintaining provider trust. In 2021, Sana had an average claim payment time of 4 days. 

Additional highlights:

In March, Sana co-founder and CEO Will Young hosted a panel discussion on value-based care strategies during SXSW. Panelists included leaders from Collective Health, Maven Clinic, and 2nd.MD. Over 500 people registered for the event. 

In November, Sana had a company-wide Wellness Week. In addition to sending a wellness box to all employees, there were daily activities, including a mindfulness & self-compassion workshop, a breathwork session, and restorative yoga. 

In December, Sana was excited to find out we had won an Austin Inno Fire Award. The award is given to the top 50 innovators in Austin, and Sana was selected as one of the top five health tech startups in the city. 

It was an exciting year for all of us here at Sana, and we can’t wait to dive right into 2022. We are so grateful for every small business that has trusted us with their employees’ care, and we’ll continue working toward our mission to fix the broken healthcare system. 

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Sana is excited to announce we’ve partnered with Proactive MD, a national leader in offering comprehensive primary care, to open Sana MD, a new Advanced Primary Care health center in Austin, Texas.

Members on Sana’s PPO Plus plans will receive world-class primary care at no cost, with $0 copays for unlimited visits and services. Patients can visit their new primary care physician at Sana MD for routine annual physicals, acute care, complex chronic conditions, and everything in between. 

Sana MD brings together several pieces of the healthcare system, making them more accessible and understandable for our members. The health center provides personalized, compassionate, and informative support when navigating the healthcare system. 

Sana MD will open in January 2022.

Building a value-based primary care model is essential to improving health outcomes and reducing costs for employers and employees. By promoting a proactive and more in-depth relationship with a primary care physician, Sana MD emphasizes preventive care, chronic care monitoring and management, and wellness. This value-based primary care model is proven to deliver a better experience for patients and physicians alike. 

Sana MD includes family medicine, urgent and preventive care, reduced-cost prescriptions through an in-house pharmacy, labs and diagnostics, chronic disease management, and total wellness solutions including weight loss programs, diabetes education, stress management, smoking cessation, and wellness coaching — all under one roof.

Members are paired with a Patient Advocate —  a licensed social worker who’ll be a trusted advisor to help with referrals, second opinions, and even in-home check-ins.

Sana MD is breaking the mold of fee-for-service, rapid patient turnover primary care by providing:

• Wait times less than 5 minutes
• No-rush 30-minute appointment blocks
• First-class service from a friendly and caring staff
• Virtual visits with video appointments and in-app messaging
• Patient Advocates paired with members to help guide them through their care journey

Sana provides high-quality, value-based health care to small businesses and their employees. Sana MD will be the foundation of our Sana Care ecosystem in Austin, and we aim to expand our Advanced Primary Care services to more locations in the future.

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If you reflect on your own health insurance and healthcare experiences 10, 20, or 30 years ago and compare them to today (or at least, pre-pandemic times with respect to virtual care)… has it changed much? 

I have had the privilege of working in healthcare innovation for almost 15 years, and there truly has never been a better time to make an impact. COVID vaccines were developed and commercialized with breathtaking speed. And if you work in healthcare, you probably can name 20 venture-backed startups targeting just Medicare or Diabetes off the top of your head. It makes sense why there is so much attention in these spaces. For one, Medicare represents 31% of health policy premiums earned per the NAIC 2019 Accident and Health Policy Experience Report. Secondly, Diabetes and related conditions accounted for 23% of healthcare spending. There is so much need and amazing innovation in each of these segments and so many others!

Yet, every year we are faced with tides of ever-growing healthcare spend ($3.8 Trillion in 2019), while U.S. health outcomes fall far short of other developed nations that spend substantially less on healthcare.  While there are many reasons for this, one key reason is encapsulated in Clayton Christensen’s landmark work, The Innovator’s Dilemma. 

It’s a key part of Sana’s strategy, and what first drew me in. 

Smart, rational organizations focus on large, growing markets and high profit margins (see Medicare and Diabetes above). However, this causes under-investment in certain kinds of disruptive innovation. 

Big disruptors more often come from smaller, lower-margin market segments.

For example, Airbnb began by renting airbeds to people that weren’t able to find hotel rooms for the 2008 Democratic National Convention and other high-demand conferences. It now poses a genuine threat to traditional hotels, comprising nearly 20% of all consumer lodging spending in 2018 and offering everything from low-end single rooms to luxury villas.

Another example is Southwest Airlines. Southwest introduced a more economical model of air travel utilizing point-to-point short-haul flights and less-expensive gate slots at lower-demand airports instead of the traditional hub-and-spoke model employed by legacy carriers. The company also employed a lower margin, no-frills approach of minimal food service and no assigned seating. This “low-end disruption” approach of appealing initially to budget travelers eventually made its way upstream, disrupting the incumbents’ position with Southwest now holding the #1 market share position serving 17.8% of passengers in 2019.

So what might that look like in health care?

Small businesses make up 99% of U.S. employers, accounting for ~44% of U.S. economic activity and two-thirds of net new job creation. 

But the Small Employer market is just 6% of total health policy premiums earned, per the NAIC 2019 Accident and Health Policy Experience Report. A far cry from the market size of Diabetes (23%) or Medicare (31%). Because it’s so much smaller, many established and new players do not invest as much in the Small Employer market.

As a result, this market segment is feeling serious pain. Small employers, on average, pay 8-18% more than large employers for the same health insurance policy. A recent poll released by the Small Business Majority and Families USA highlights this cost burden for small businesses in the face of the pandemic: 

• 1 in 3 small business owners say it’s a challenge getting health insurance coverage for themselves and their employees 
• Nearly 1 in 5 say they plan to make changes or reduce healthcare coverage in the next few months to keep their businesses open

This is the market Sana Benefits is focused on. 

Of course, it’s high risk, with plenty of headwinds (as with any start-up). 

This is where Sana’s strategy, track record of building and delivering on a high cadence, team and culture drove my decision.

Sana’s customer base is growing rapidly. To achieve this growth – and accelerate future growth – Sana focuses on pairing talent density with empowerment through context, trust and candor. The team has scaled from less than 40 employees at the start of 2020 to close to 100 today, including product, design and engineering teams in-house.

For me, joining and helping nurture an inclusive, productive and innovative work environment was a requirement. Sana was founded in 2017 as a remote-first company; even our co-founders live 1,200 miles apart! More importantly, our commitment to diversity and inclusion continues to grow. Juneteenth and Election Day are company holidays. We encourage employees to take PTO to protest and volunteer. Our company t-shirts are made by a Black-owned, family-owned business. We have a policy of not participating in panels that lack women or minority panelists. We sponsored The Black in HR organization. We match employee non-profit donations. Diversity, and more importantly inclusion, are key to improving performance as any company scales, and a priority at Sana.

With this team and culture, we’re building an integrated health plan, centered on accountable primary care, with robust consumer advocacy and digital care delivery. Serving small employers not only means focusing on an under-served market with acute needs. It enables us to productize solutions, build for scalability and automate flexibility upfront. By contrast, innovators targeting large employers often initially serve just a few clients who demand a highly consultative, bespoke solution. You can read about some of what we’ve already got going in value-based care and digital health partnerships as well as customer experience and more in this blog post. 

And people outside of Sana are noticing us too. LinkedIn ranked Sana on their list of the Top 50 Best Startups to Work For.  LinkedIn’s ranking has a pretty good track record: More than 20% of the featured startups over the past three years have either gone public or been purchased. 

One of Sana’s values is “build the future.”  I came to Sana, sleeves rolled up, to help build and scale what healthcare should – and can – be.  And you know what? We’re on our way to delivering healthcare experiences orders of magnitude more impactful than that first e-commerce transaction on my smartphone.

Want to join our team and mission? We’re hiring!

– Jaime

Jaime’s bio:

Prior to joining Sana Benefits as Chief Product Officer, Jaime served as Interim CEO at seed-stage consumer health and benefits platform Yaro through to its acquisition by Virgin Pulse and advised digital health companies and venture capital firms via Shift Health Advisory. She has helped design, build, evaluate, scale and lead a range of products and services across Blue Plans, Aetna (now CVS), Walgreens and Venture-backed start-ups that have improved healthcare quality and outcomes, lowered cost and improved consumer experience. She is a member of January Venture’s Operator Network. Her predictions on market dynamics amidst Covid have been published in MedCity News and Fierce Healthcare, and her perspectives on the globalization of digital health and AI were featured in MedCity News.

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The cost of healthcare all comes down to quality vs. quantity. Most providers are compensated for each test/procedure/service they perform – a model called fee-for-service (FFS) – not by the overall quality of care. While we recognize that the patient’s health is paramount to most providers, FFS provides the incentive to provide expensive care that is unlikely to provide any health improvement. In the worst cases, it may lead providers to provide expensive care that is actually detrimental to patient health.

FFS also disincentivizes primary care (due to low compensation) and novel methods of preventive care that are harder to bill for, so we don’t invest enough in detecting potential future acute events early or caring for people with chronic conditions. The adverse incentives created by this compensation model are a large part of what drives up healthcare costs for all parties involved – payor, employer, and ultimately, the patient. 

Value-based care is a strong alternative to the typical FFS provider reimbursement method. It rewards providers for achieving high-quality health outcomes without unnecessary visits or procedures. With millions of Americans getting a misdiagnosis every year, the value of getting it right and being efficient is crucial in bringing overall costs down. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has implemented value-based programs within Medicare in an attempt to accomplish three outcomes: better care for individuals, better health for populations, and lower costs. Value-based programs CMS has implemented include performance metrics on hospital re-admission, errors during hospital admission, and dialysis facility success. 

At Sana, we’ve brought in partners specializing in value-based care that allow us to bring costs down for employers and members alike.

Here’s what we’re doing to make value-based care a reality:

Telehealth: By providing access to $0 virtual visits through Plushcare, our members can get a same-day appointment with a doctor from the comforts of home instead of a more costly and inconvenient visit to the ER or urgent care facility. Telehealth has become a vital part of any healthcare plan. 

Pharmacy benefits: Sana partners with SmithRx, a transparent pharmacy benefit manager, to pass through all pharmaceutical rebates and discounts.  This allows for fair pricing for members and provides health plans with more predictable and understandable Rx costs.

Centers of Excellence: Members that need complicated surgery get access to Edison Healthcare. Edison can send patients to the country’s best hospitals, such as Mayo Clinic and Boston Children’s Hospital, that have the expertise and resources they need. For many patients, care is covered 100%, and Edison even offers benefits to cover travel costs. 

Imaging: Sana works with Green Imaging to provide members with free or significantly discounted imaging services — such as CTs, MRIs, ultrasounds, and more. By partnering with high-quality facilities and reducing costs for the patient, we aim to equip doctors with all the information they need to provide first-rate and efficient care. 

Mental Health: It’s an important and often-overlooked part of healthcare, but mental health is essential.  To get our members timely treatment, Sana provides access to Ginger, delivering on-demand mental healthcare day or night. Mental health can severely impact physical health, increasing incidences of heart disease, high blood pressure, and weakened immune systems. Getting your body right can start with getting your mind the care it needs. 

Maternity: Sana partners with Maven to provide virtual maternity care for every path to parenthood. Those who use the service get access to 24/7 care and video chats with specialists in fertility, pregnancy, OB-GYN, and more. This leads to 36% of members avoiding unnecessary doctor’s appointments or ER visits. 

Second opinions: In the medical field, as in any other, mistakes happen. But in healthcare, those mistakes can be extremely costly. A recent study showed 12 million patients received a misdiagnosis last year, which led to high and unnecessary healthcare expenses. Sana members get access to 2nd.md for free second opinions and treatment programs via its telehealth app, and can be referred to its highest-quality local physicians for post-consult follow-ups. 

In-home care: Sana encourages its members to skip the costly, time consuming, and inconvenient trips to medical centers.  At little or no cost to Sana members, Dispatch Health delivers on-demand in-home care for a wide range of illnesses and conditions. Dispatch Health can provide the same services as an urgent care center and the bulk of what an ER can do.

Sana is always looking for ways to bring value-based, high-quality care to our members. It’s the most reliable way to make care affordable and accessible, and we’ll continue to partner with organizations that will help us support that mission. 

Will

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While we’ll remember 2020 as especially tumultuous and challenging, we are going back one last time at the year everyone can’t wait to put behind them. Sana is looking very different than it did a year ago, so we wanted to share what happened over the last 365 days to get us to where we are now.

Our team

Sana is serving thousands more small business employees than we did a year ago, and we’ve had to quickly expand our team to do so. We’ve grown from 40 to 98 employees in just one year, exceeding our wildest expectations. We’ve seen extensive growth in our provider, product, marketing, sales, underwriting, and operations teams.

Our customer success team more than doubled over the last year, allowing us to continue to provide personalized support to all of our benefits admins. Our member advocate team has also grown from 5 to 21 so that we can continue efficiently responding to questions while keeping our NPS above 40 as our membership doubled. 

Sana entered 2020 operating only in Texas, but we were excited to expand into Kentucky in April and Illinois in September, respectively. We’ve since begun working with small businesses in each state. Both states are lacking in health insurance options outside of their respective monopolies, so we plan to continue to offer more affordable and accessible care to those businesses that need it the most. Sana will continue expanding into several more states underserved by traditional health insurance carriers in 2021. 

Responding to the circumstances of 2020

The story of 2020 was COVID-19 and it’s important to know you’re covered when a pandemic is sweeping across the globe. Sana was quick to jump in to make sure our members were taken care of, making all COVID-19 related treatments, diagnostic tests, antibody tests, and vaccines 100% free for all Sana members. That coverage is still in effect now and will be for the foreseeable future. 

In June, as the country witnessed the tragic killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed, Sana sought input from our employees on how we could begin to be a part of the solution to the racism plaguing our country. As a company, Sana committed to:

• Establishing Juneteenth and Election Day as holidays
• Encouraging employees to take PTO to protest and volunteer
• Hiring all management positions according to the Rooney Rule
• Not participating in panels that lack women or minority panelists
• Matching employee donations to NAACP, Black Girls Code, the ACLU, and Campaign Zero up to $10,000 total
• Matching additional non-profit donations up to $250 annually per employee
• Requiring bias training for all hiring managers
• Creating a budget for future D&I initiatives

Company news

On September 9, we announced that Sana had raised a $20.8 Series A funding round. This funding will allow Sana to enter new markets, improve our offerings, and continue to grow our team to keep up with demand.

In October, Sana rolled out new all-access health plans with more options for deductibles and coinsurance, while still keeping our policy of no out-of-network restrictions. By going from five to nine plans, we’re able to give small businesses more flexibility in what they offer to employees. 

Delivering on our promise

Sana’s mission is to make healthcare understandable, accessible, and affordable. Value-based care is the best way to reduce costs while improving patient outcomes, and we partnered with several organizations that make that a reality for our members. 

Edison Healthcare is providing our members with Centers of Excellence for surgery, while Connect DME and Green Imaging are equipping patients with low or no-cost medical devices and imaging, respectively. 

We’ve brought on SmithRx as our new transparent Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM). Unlike traditional PBMs, which often keep drug discounts and rebates for themselves, transparent PBMs like SmithRx pass them on to the member.  With pharmaceuticals costs increasing rapidly under traditional PBMs, offering SmithRx to our members will go a long way towards lowering their healthcare costs.

Customer experience 

While Sana has a culture of remote work built-in, we know working from home was a difficult change for many in 2020. We spend a lot of time working with human resources professionals, so as a way to give them a break we hosted multiple ‘Treat Yo Self’ virtual events. The events included yoga and meditation, and we even sent attendees ingredients so they could make a cocktail with our guest mixologist.

We’ve also made several updates to our website to improve the member and admin experience, including:

Easier document signing and onboarding: We’ve automated the documents required to get your company set up with Sana, so it’s even easier to review, sign, and get back to business.

Improved ‘Find a Doctor’ search: Members can see high-quality medical partners and perks in search results with info about how to access each, and quickly search popular specialties with a single click.

Request a provider: Members can easily request their preferred provider or facility right from their account.

Enroll in Life and Disability Coverage: If Life and Disability are offered by an employer, members can now enroll online in our easy enrollment flow.

Looking forward

That was an eventful 2020. While we’re all happy to see it in our rearview mirror, we’re even more excited about the year to come. Sana is committed to initiatives that will give members low-cost, high-quality care in 2021, and we’ll continue to bring in partners that will support that mission. You can also expect to see more exciting product updates on our website

We’re excited to expand into more states and meet more small businesses that are looking for a new solution to rising healthcare costs. Sana is ready to make 2021 the best year yet!

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But while many employees are struggling to stay active and physically well amid the pandemic, employers can adapt their physical wellness benefits for a virtual world.

For Sana Benefits, a health benefits provider, this meant evolving a benefit they were already offering employees through ClassPass, a subscription-based provider of fitness classes they’ve been utilizing since 2018…

Read more at Employee Benefit Adviser.

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What you should know: Sana Benefits offers self-financed health insurance plans that are geared toward small businesses. With self-financed health plans, employers pay for the health care their employees use (versus a flat rate), potentially saving money. Sana has also teamed up with…

Read more at Linkedin.

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The round was led by Austin-based Gigafund. Additional investors included Trust Ventures and….

Read more at the Austin American-Statesman.

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