Case study: Sana’s experience with Carrum Health

Musculoskeletal pain—a spectrum of disorders affecting the bones, joints, ligaments, and tendons—affects half of U.S. adults and is one of employers’ top drivers of healthcare spend, with 75% saying it’s among their top three cost drivers.

Prior to partnering with Carrum Health, Sana—an Austin-based company that provides comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage to small businesses—was feeling the impact. Almost one-fifth of their 30,000 members had an MSK-related claim; some of those claims (e.g., knee replacement surgery) reached as high as $70,000.

Since partnering with Carrum in 2022, Sana has been able to better address the significant challenge of the rising costs associated with musculoskeletal pain, which were affecting the company both financially and from a productivity standpoint.

Partnering with Carrum to address musculoskeletal pain

Before teaming up with Carrum, Sana had a different centers of excellence (COE) solution in place for musculoskeletal pain. While they really appreciated the member experience provided by that other solution, they simply weren’t seeing the levels of engagement they wanted to see. Plus, they kept running into access issues due to limitations with the solution’s network.

After a thorough search for a new centers of excellence solution that would help them increase member engagement and access to high-quality care, Sana chose Carrum for its easy-to-use member portal, dedicated care navigators, ability to perform targeted outreach, and focus on value based care aligned incentives for providers, payers, and patients.

Sana launched Carrum’s nationwide centers of excellence network in 2022. In addition to activating the MSK (musculoskeletal) service line, which includes spinal surgery and hip, knee, shoulder, and ankle replacements, they also activated cardiac care and cancer care.

“We had such good engagement right out of the gate,” says Agata Kowalski, Sana’s head of strategic partnerships. “I was genuinely surprised at how many people signed up for an account during launch month. The demand was there.”

Exploring the results

Through this partnership, Sana not only tackled the escalating costs of MSK treatments but also significantly improved access to top-tier care and member satisfaction, demonstrating the powerful impact of value based care models.

To learn more about Sana’s experience partnering with Carrum Health, including Sana’s specific plan design, the breadth of Carrum’s surgical network, ecoystem integration, and more, check out the case study.

The case study also includes program results such as:

• Plan savings per episode
• Member savings per episode
• Member NPS

READ THE CASE STUDY