How Oscar Health + Hy-Vee Are Building a New Local, Tech-Enabled Health Plan
Release Date: 11/25/2025
The Care Model Hospitals Can’t Ignore: Sinai Chicago’s Community Health Worker Playbook
Bright Spots in Healthcare
What if the most effective care model isn’t built inside the hospital at all? This episode features the opening presentation from the recent Home Care Innovation Summit, a half-day virtual summit produced by Bright Spots Ventures in partnership with TytoCare, focused on how leading organizations are redesigning care to reach patients where they are. Kelly McCabe, Director of Community Health Innovations, Sinai Chicago and the Sinai Urban Health Institute (SUHI) shares a practical, equity-driven model: clinically integrating community health workers (CHWs) into care delivery to bridge the gap...
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MD Anderson Emergency Physician: AI Isn’t Enough Without a Digital Health Ecosystem
Bright Spots in Healthcare
In this episode of Bright Spots in Healthcare, recorded live at the ViVE 2026 conference, Eric Glazer sits down with Dr. Pavitra Krishnamani from MD Anderson Cancer Center to explore what it actually takes to build scalable digital health systems. As both a practicing emergency physician and digital health innovator, Dr. Krishnamani brings a frontline perspective to one of healthcare’s biggest challenges: why so many digital health tools fail to scale, and what separates technologies that succeed from those that don’t. While the industry continues to invest heavily in AI, wearables,...
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EmblemHealth, Doctors HealthCare Plans, Security Health Plan, & MedOrion: Rethinking CAHPS & Member Experience
Bright Spots in Healthcare
In this Bright Spots in Healthcare episode, host Eric Glazer brings together payer and strategy leaders to explore a fundamental challenge in Medicare Advantage: why improving experience is not about measuring more, but managing better. This conversation focuses on where performance is actually being lost across the member journey, not within individual programs, but in the gaps between them. Plans continue to invest in outreach, pharmacy, provider engagement, and member services, yet still struggle to translate those efforts into consistent member action and measurable outcomes. This is a...
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BCBSM, Healthfirst, CareFirst Community Health Plan, & Drips: MA Strategy Playbook
Bright Spots in Healthcare
In this Bright Spots in Healthcare episode, host Eric Glazer brings together payer leaders to explore a fundamental challenge in Medicare Advantage: why strong strategies often fail to translate into sustained performance. This conversation focuses on the gap between intention and execution, where plans invest heavily in programs, outreach, and data, yet still struggle to drive the member actions that ultimately determine cost, quality, and experience. This is a candid discussion for executives navigating rising pressure on margins, increasing complexity in member populations, and the growing...
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What’s Working in Chronic Care | CommonSpirit, Mount Sinai, White-Wilson + More
Bright Spots in Healthcare
Chronic care isn’t failing because of strategy. It’s breaking down in execution. In this episode of Bright Spots in Healthcare, host Eric Glazer brings together provider leaders to explore a critical issue: the loss of time, attention, and clinical capacity to inefficient workflows instead of patient care. This conversation highlights how organizations are making structural changes to reduce friction, improve follow-up, and build more sustainable chronic care models. 🎯 What you’ll learn: Why chronic care breaks down in workflow, not strategy How leading providers reduce...
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Essence Healthcare and Humana: Moving from Episodic Care to Longitudinal Outcomes
Bright Spots in Healthcare
In this Bright Spots in Healthcare episode, host Eric Glazer brought together payer and provider leaders to examine a major shift underway in specialty care. Historically, specialty models have been built around episodic intervention, stepping in after a condition has progressed. But as organizations take on greater accountability for outcomes and cost, that model is becoming harder to sustain. The conversation explored how AI, earlier signal detection, and more connected care models can help organizations identify risk sooner, guide members more effectively, and support better outcomes over...
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Texas A&M, HCA & Houston Methodist: What It Really Takes to Fix Rural Healthcare Access
Bright Spots in Healthcare
In this Bright Spots in Healthcare episode, host Eric Glazer convenes provider and health system leaders working at the front lines of rural healthcare transformation across Texas. The conversation explores what it actually takes to extend clinical expertise across distance, workforce shortages, and infrastructure gaps, and how organizations are redesigning care delivery to meet patients where they are. This is a candid discussion for leaders navigating real operational constraints while building models that can scale. Together, the panel explores how hybrid care, digital infrastructure, and...
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Turning AI into Real Results: A Population Health Blueprint from UC Davis Health
Bright Spots in Healthcare
In this episode of Bright Spots in Healthcare, recorded live at the ViVE 2026 conference, Eric Glazer sits down with Dr. Reshma Gupta from UC Davis Health to explore how health systems can translate artificial intelligence and predictive analytics into real operational improvement. As Chief of Population Health and Accountable Care, Reshma focuses on turning data and predictive insight into measurable outcomes across prevention, care management, and accountable care programs. Her work highlights a central challenge facing healthcare leaders today: many organizations have the models, but far...
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Highmark, Healthfirst, Colorado Access & DarioHealth: Redesigning Care Between Visits
Bright Spots in Healthcare
In this Bright Spots in Healthcare episode, host Eric Glazer convenes health plan leaders who are focused on what happens beyond the clinic visit, the moments between care where behavior, adherence, and risk quietly take shape. The conversation centers on how plans are operationalizing care without proximity by extending support into daily life, redesigning benefit strategies, and moving from episodic measurement to longitudinal influence. This is a candid discussion for executives who are still building, still questioning assumptions, and still shaping what sustainable, whole-person care can...
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Sidecar Health CEO Patrick Quigley: Fixing Health Insurance by Rewiring the Incentives
Bright Spots in Healthcare
What happens when a health plan stops trying to optimize a legacy system and instead rebuilds the model itself? In this episode of Bright Spots in Healthcare, Eric Glazer sits down with Patrick Quigley, CEO and co-founder of Sidecar Health, for a candid conversation about redesigning health insurance around transparency, incentives, and consumer agency. Rather than focusing on incremental reform, this discussion explores what changes when members can see prices before they receive care, when benefits are structured around clear dollar amounts instead of opaque contracts, and when savings can...
info_outlineGuests:
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Louis DeStefano, Chief Growth Officer, Oscar Health
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Jon Van Der Veer, DO, Founder & CEO, Hy-Vee Health
In this special HLTH interview, Bright Spots in Healthcare host Eric Glazer speaks with two leaders shaping one of the most innovative payer–provider–retail collaborations in the country:
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Louis DeStefano, Chief Growth Officer, Oscar Health
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Jon Van Der Veer, DO, Founder & CEO, Hy-Vee Health
Together, Oscar Health and Hy-Vee Health are building a new kind of health plan, one that blends local access, convenient care, primary care-first design, and tech-enabled member experience. Think of it as a hybrid model: part direct primary care, part advanced digital platform, part community-rooted retail ecosystem.
This conversation dives into how the two organizations are integrating brick-and-mortar clinics, urgent care, pharmacy, SDOH-friendly retail access, and Oscar’s tech stack, including “Oswell,” Oscar’s AI-powered clinical support tool, to deliver a personalized and coordinated experience.
Topics We Cover:
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Why healthcare must be local, convenient, and relationship-driven
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How the partnership blends a supermarket chain, primary care clinics, and a tech-enabled health plan into one member experience
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How ICHRA is opening new doors for employer-driven personalization
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The role of AI and tools like Oswell in interpreting labs, improving communication, and augmenting care
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What a modern, scalable direct primary care model could look like
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The 10-year vision for this collaboration and where it expands next
This episode offers a first look into a payer–retail–provider model that could reshape consumer expectations, and redefine how employer-sponsored and individual coverage works in the coming decade.
References and Mentions:
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Learn more about the partnership between Oscar Health and Hy-Vee Health - https://www.hioscar.com/hy-vee-health
- Meet Oswell, Oscar Health's new health AI agent - https://www.hioscar.com/oswell
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Dr. Garrison Bliss, widely recognized as the “Godfather of Direct Primary Care” - https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrisonblissmd/
Bios:
Louis DeStefano: https://hlth.com/events/usa/speakers/2025/louis-destefano
Dr. Jon Van Der Veer: https://hlth.com/events/usa/speakers/2025/jon-van-der-veer
Partner with Bright Spots Ventures: If you are interested in speaking with the Bright Spots Ventures team to brainstorm how we can help you grow your business via content and relationships, email hkrish@brightspotsventures.com
About Bright Spots Ventures:
Bright Spots Ventures is a healthcare strategy and engagement company that creates content, communities, and connections to accelerate innovation. We help healthcare leaders discover what's working, and how to scale it. By bringing together health plan, hospital, and solution leaders, we facilitate the exchange of ideas that lead to measurable impact. Through our podcast, executive councils, private events, and go-to-market strategy work, we surface and amplify the "bright spots" in healthcare—proven innovations others can learn from and replicate. At our core, we exist to create trusted relationships that make real progress possible. Visit our website at www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com.
Visit our website: www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com.
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