1638 – Access to Better Healthcare with Xevant’s Brandon Newman

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0:58with us right now brandon newman brandon you are the founder ceo and chairman at zevant and zevant is on the web at zevant.com that's x-e-v-a-n-t.com brandon thank you so much for joining us it's a pleasure thank you very much josh excited to be here yeah so guess tell us what Zavant is. Zavant, data analytics for big healthcare companies who are looking to optimize pharmacy benefits. I know it seems all not very exciting when you talk about pharmacy benefits, but when you really talk about the trends in healthcare, it's all about drugs and the expensive drugs and access to drugs and the very complex environment which we play.

1:43We solve for all of that. Yeah. Well, and there certainly has been a lot of headlines over the past number of years. You know, Mark Cuban's gotten into it. I mean, there's just a lot of people that are trying to improve this world. Where do you fit in from a consumer point of view? From a consumer point of view, you look at the overall cost of pharmacy itself, maybe some individual, an individual person spends about$1 ,000 a year, maybe a little bit more,$1 ,200 a year. What we're looking for is helping the consumer to reduce their cost by accessing either lower cost drugs or access to more appropriate medications or some of the hidden things like rebates, drug rebates and the complexity of how to access those.

2:30We're about trying to get that all the way down to the end payer, the payer, whether it be me, a patient, all of us, or an employer or whoever's paying for that medication. We're all about optimizing to ensure that we can lower those costs and access better healthcare. And so are you, you're not working with employers, you're working with, or you're working with the, well, I'll let you explain. I'm trying to visualize where you are in the food chain here. I mean, talking to employers is great. We're all about helping employers. For the most part, most employers don't know how to navigate the complexity of pharmacy benefits.

3:08And so you end up going to PBMs, those are pharmacy benefit managers, or the health plans of drugs, right, of pharmacy benefits. And I'm going to payers like health plans, TPAs, and then ultimately the crowded world of consultants and brokers and helping them to manage their employers. So the end of the day, employers benefit from what we do, but we're going to those that are optimizing on their behalf. Yeah. How come there is so much like just these wild fluctuations in prices for consumers? Wow. If we could answer that one question and successfully do that, I don't think I would need to exist today.

3:50And to be honest, you got pharmaceutical. So sort of navigate our way through your pharmaceutical manufacturers who make the drug. And to get it to the consumers, we have to deliver to wholesalers and distributors who then get it to pharmacies. You've got over 70 ,000 pharmacies located all over the country, and we're going into the local mom and pa's or chain pharmacies to pick it up. That whole process requires a lot of coordination and complexity. And then comes the inordinate cost of providing it. I can't afford a$20 ,000 drug when I just show up. And because of that, my employer picked up some of that cost.

4:30There's assistance programs, there's drug cards, there's any number of those things. And so then there's benefits just like health plans. And so to be able to just get that drug, there's literally hundreds of edits and process to ensure that I'm an eligible member and I should get that drug and I should get that amount of the drug, right? All those rights of, you know, what a patient should be able to get at the pharmacy. At the end of the day, we're paying for that convenience and being able to show up, get that medication that's sitting on the stock and buying it for a copay. Maybe it's$100, maybe it's$20.

5:03I take that home. And then there's a whole bunch of coordination that happens in the background of which we're optimizing together with all those big players. So I wish it was just as simple as, hey, go pick up the drug like it used to be 60 years ago. Hey, you're getting your soda, your deodorant, and your prescription. It was just that simple. But now the complexity of healthcare, it's not as simple as that. And quite candidly, what we're seeing is healthcare shifting outside of medical more and more and more. Biologics and these high cost specialty drugs. But now we're curing diseases. Now we're really removing the cost of high cost medical costs and moving to the pharmacy.

5:44So now pharmacy is becoming the focal point for all of healthcare. Yes. And so I think it's exciting to imagine what the world will be like. And again, thinking about it either, you know, from both kind of a consumer or an employee and employer standpoint, like what they're able to provide, like, you know, if you were to break out the crystal ball, where do you think we're headed? Oh, wow. Where are we headed? You know, ultimately, in terms of where we're headed. If you look at the past, it's the best predictor of the future, right? And so although there will continue to be new medications coming out at a faster rate, look at what AI has done for many industries.

6:28One of the biggest focal points is around drug development and trying to target very specifically what Josh Elledge needs to mitigate and manage your diagnoses or your health condition, that sort of customization has already begun. If you look at some of the specialty drugs that have come out, they're not addressing 80 % of the market like Lipitor did and addressing cholesterol. They're addressing potentially 0.5 % of the market. They're extremely high priced because of that. But by doing so, we're removing some of the really expensive costs on the medical side that we're really driving the medical costs.

7:08So as we continue to move that dial forward in the future, drug creation will be highly customized. It'll infuse tremendous amount of artificial intelligence, which it already does, and at an accelerating rate to the point where I've got a medication that's for Brandon Newman that addresses my issues and potentially eliminate not all, but most of those healthcare costs in the future. I don't even want to start pontificating on cell regeneration and all that other fun stuff. That's for the other folks. But for us, we see that coming down the path. That being said, we're merging that sort of innovation with a market that is so complex and almost archaic that we're trying to apply archaic systems to nuanced sort of healthcare that it really just doesn't jive.

7:58And so what we're doing at Zavant is making that automation of analysis happen as real time as possible so that we are helping the patient to find the lowest cost drug. They're not just simply saying, give me the green pill instead of that injectable. They're saying, hey, the green pill is less costly and I can get a rebate or I can get a drug card and I can lower my symptoms or my side effects because I can do that all in real time through automation. I don't want to overstate this, but I'm sure that you've had conversations, you know, when you're kind of focused on mission purpose values. You know, in theory, you're saving lives potentially if you're, you know, talking about a consumer, and this is kind of the consumer advocate in me coming out here.

8:41But, you know, if you're dealing with a consumer that's struggling to afford the medication, I mean, here in the United States, right, that they may or may not be able to afford, you know, if you can give them or help them get clarity on the most effective way, or again, the provider to make that data available so that, you know, at the end of the day, you know, that consumer can get the best medication for their situation. situation, in the time, in the budget that they can afford, yeah, I mean, that's, you know, potentially life-saving or certainly an improvement in quality of life. Well, it's the old adage, right?

9:22If you don't have your health, you have nothing, all the successes and riches in the world, your health really drives whether or not you have something in life. And I believe that. A personal story, if I go back 10 years ago, I was sitting at the top of my career, 20 years in, I've been in healthcare all that time. And I felt like I'd learned a lot. And I was a leader, a thought leader in the space. And then all of a sudden, I got hit with my diagnosis, right? That ethereal moment in the last 10 years where I sat with my doctor and said, hey, you might want to get your affairs in order. Those words are the absolute worst words that we possibly have.

9:59And so if I look at the prior 20 years and doing things in theory versus now it's personal, right? What I can afford and what I can get really matters. And I think that really changed and shifted my thinking. It's really what created Zavant to say, maybe it wasn't necessarily personally motivated, but I had a personal experience that said, hey, can I actually access good healthcare because I have access to my medication and my medication was outside of my reach at the time. So how do I access drug cards and rebates and alternative medications and then do that in real time? It really wasn't available at the time.

10:40And so moving that forward, it sort of created this movement, not just me, but all of us are sort of moving towards that word access, just because you have access, quality, and cost. Those are the three components of healthcare. If I can't afford it, I can't access. If I can't access, I don't have quality. And so you have to address the cost component. And if costs are going through the roof and it's unreachable, what do I do? I either A, go to Canada, I go to Mexico, I start looking for Mark Cuban, I start looking for alternatives, but what else do I do? I stop taking my medications because I got to put food on the table.

11:18I got to provide for my family. And And if I can't provide those things, I start missing my diabetic medication. I'm not saying that's what I have, but that's what happened in the U.S. What, 10, 15 percent of Americans who are dealing with high, high cost of diabetics. And all of a sudden the industry in the last six months broke and said, no more. We're not going to do that. But had we looked at things a little bit more in automation and analyzing that and identifying those opportunities in more real time, we may not have broken. And really what's resulted as a result is a tremendous amount of effort in regulation to fix these problems and get lower costs to the end consumer, you and I, so that we can access it, so we can afford it, so that we can have quality lives.

12:02You know, of anyone listening to our podcast right now, I suspect that they may know someone that should absolutely be booking a call with Zavon. And what are those, again, and again, maybe use kind of lay language on who those folks might be, folks in our network, the need to go back, listen to this episode, and absolutely grab some time and take a look at what Savant is doing. So just very specifically, who are those clients or those potential customers or partners that you're looking for? So I'm going to just sort of back up and say any owner of a business that is looking to afford benefits and do it in a better way, those are really who's benefiting from what we're doing.

12:43Can we help them? Yes, we have a number with about 18 ,000 employers that benefit on our platform. We typically go through large brokerages or consulting firms who are managing their benefits. But if you want to take control, call us. We'll help you to identify ways to reduce your, at least your pharmacy costs by 25%. And if we're reducing your pharmacy costs by 25, we're actually mitigating your medical costs as well. So at the end of the day, it's not just PBMs. It's not just health plans and payers. It's really everybody that's trying to provide a benefit to the 300 million Americans by way of some sort of employment.

13:21Yeah. Your website, Zavant.com, X-E-V-A-N-T. What are those, what does that discovery conversation look like? What typically happens in a first call? Yeah, the first call, what we're finding out is, you know, how are you providing benefits today? How are you providing pharmacy benefits today? What is driving your cost up? We look at your trends and did you see an increase in drug costs that were greater than what you've typically seen? Do you implement programs like clinical programs, dose optimization programs? Do you have access to rebate, drug rebate data? Do you have access to copay programs or drug cards, those sorts of things?

14:08You start breaking down literally about 15 core areas. And before you realize, most people just don't have at least real-time access to those programs. And we start unpacking it and running those analysis for them and identifying immediately what those opportunities look like. Most of our clients that go live, within days, they are already seeing the cost reductions because we're accessing systems and tools and programs that really are unreachable or are typically waiting a year later to find out, hey, I could fix this, but it's so far down the path that is it really something that they can take advantage of 12 months after the fact?

14:52So those are the typical engagement, the points in which we begin to talk to our clients. Yeah. Again, Zavant.com, X-E-V-A-N-T, and Brandon Newman, your founder, CEO, chairman. Congratulations, by the way, and you're phenomenal. Let me just ask you about the company itself, when it was founded, just the growth that you've experienced over the past seven years. Yeah. Zavant's a special story for me. It was one of those that I started being broken, Right. So remember, I started Zavant after getting that crazy diagnosis and having that ethereal conversation with my doctor and then realizing that I wouldn't be able to wrestle this thing to the ground.

15:35I'd have to go find this unheard power of we. And that's something that we embrace at Zavant. And when I finally decided to let go and trust and truly empower a team, all of a sudden magic happened. And yeah, if you look at the last two years, We've grown close to 2000%. But because we're focused on the problem and solving real issues and delivering value, not just because we're working really hard, we're doing the things that really matter that deliver value. And so if I look at two years ago, we were probably less than 20 employees. We're approaching 100. We've grown over 2000 % revenue, all those fun things.

16:19But, you know, at the end of the day, what I really stand by, the last numbers we ran, we're at 70 million Americans that we have helped to reduce the cost of healthcare for. And that, to me, is all that matters. And I'm one of those. My five kids are five of those. My wife is one of those. And that's really, at the end of the day, all that we look at is every one of those numbers means that we've reduced the cost by at least some percentage because we did something magical. Those are real people with real life experiences that have been improved. So, well, Brandon Newman, again, founder, CEO, chairman of Zivant, X-E-V-A-N-T.com.

16:59Brandon, it's been great having you. Thank you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure. Thank you very much. Look forward to the next time. Thank you.

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