Virta Health, a leader in metabolic health and diabetes reversal, has achieved significant recognition through a rigorous validation by the Validation Institute. This endorsement confirms the effectiveness of their innovative diabetes reversal program, demonstrating not only health benefits but also cost savings. The validation underscores Virta’s commitment to transforming diabetes care on a large scale.
Key Takeaways from Virta Health’s Success
- Diabetes Reversal: Virta Health offers a revolutionary approach to reversing type 2 diabetes, shifting the paradigm from managing symptoms to potentially reversing the disease. This method significantly improves patients’ quality of life by reducing dependency on medications and fostering better health outcomes.
- Cost Savings: By focusing on eliminating the need for expensive diabetes medications, Virta Health not only improves patient health but also reduces healthcare costs significantly. The Validation Institute has confirmed these cost savings, adding credibility to Virta’s claims.
- Health Equity: Virta Health addresses health disparities in diabetes care by ensuring access to their treatment across all demographic groups. Their virtual care model and personalized nutritional therapy effectively reach underserved communities, reducing health inequities.
- Validation Institute’s Role: The endorsement from the Validation Institute plays a critical role in verifying the efficacy and economic benefits of Virta Health’s diabetes reversal program. This third-party validation enhances trust and supports broader adoption of their innovative care model.
Introduction
Validation Institute:
I’m joined today by Kevin Kumler, president of Virta Health. Welcome Kevin.
Kevin Kumler:
Thanks for having me, nice to see you.
Validation Institute:
As I hope many of you know, Virta is a healthcare company focused on metabolic health. The Validation Institute recently had an opportunity to work with Virta and examine their trial conducted on their diabetes reversal program, and I have to say we were so impressed with the results that Virta has been awarded the highest validation level we have, which is a program validation.
So everyone understands, a program validation means that Virta has gone through a very rigorous process and has proven not only great outcomes for individuals who use the diabetes reversal program but that they also will save companies money. So congratulations to you Kevin and the entire Virta team on the validation and all the amazing work you are doing.
Kevin Kumler:
Thank you so much.
Exploring the Power of Diabetes Reversal at Virta Health
Validation Institute:
I’d like to ask you a few questions. What is the power of diabetes reversal and what motivates your team at Virta Health?
Kevin Kumler:
Well, great question to start out with. First of all, diabetes reversal—the concept of reversing a chronic disease—is first of all a mindset shift.
So many people have been diagnosed with this disease and they have this belief, fostered by the system, that it’s going to be progressive, it only moves in one direction, and in some ways, they’ll describe it themselves as a death sentence.
So the idea of reversal is that you can turn back the clock, reverse the disease, put it into remission, which means your blood sugar is under control while you’re getting off of medications that previously you might have had to use to control that blood sugar, and typically you’re also losing a clinically significant amount of your body weight.
That’s ultimately what’s happening from a metabolic health point of view. But when you hear the patients talk about reversal, they talk about getting their life back.
They don’t need the medications and the side effects; they’re able to get down on the ground with their kids or their grandkids in ways that they couldn’t before.
We had a patient last week telling us that she could paint her own toenails again, and for her, that was the real-life impact of reversing the disease.
For us, what motivates us is, number one, our mission which is to reverse type 2 diabetes in 100 million people—we’ve got some work to do—and the second is really the patient stories, and we get to hear them on a daily and weekly basis and hear the impact on their lives, and that’s really motivating for our team.
The Importance of Third-Party Validation in Virta Health’s Approach to Diabetes Management
Validation Institute:
That’s amazing. And you talked a little bit about medication. So much of the conversation on the prescription drug cost crisis is focused on the most expensive and critical medications such as insulin, and making it more affordable.
But Virta really is focused on reducing or eliminating medications for patients with type 2 diabetes. What are the financial and health benefits of deprescription, and why is it important to have a third party validation for your results?
Kevin Kumler:
Yeah, great question. First of all, I’m really thankful that medications exist for things that only medications can do.
For example, for insulin, it’s a life-saving medication for people who are born with type 1 diabetes, which is a genetic condition.
However, I’m really concerned about medications being used for conditions in situations where there are alternatives that are often better, cheaper, and have fewer side effects.
If you look at the area where we participate, diabetes in particular, it’s a top three cost spend for most employers and a top five prevalent condition for most employers or health plan populations.
When you hear about the impact on the patient level, they’re going into debt in many cases to pay for their insulin, or they’re having to ration their insulin.
So there’s been a lot of attention around lowering the price of insulin, which we also applaud. But what if you reduce the need for insulin in the first place? That’s ultimately what we’re trying to do.
To give you a specific patient example to illustrate this, another Kevin, one of our patients who’s published his story, his diabetes medications were costing him personally more than six thousand dollars a year.
He described it as he felt like he was paying a copay on his own life. Six months into his work with Virta, he actually found out he was able to eliminate all of his diabetes medications, and he described it as one of the best days of his life.
As far as the third party validation that we’ve done with you all in particular, and with some of the other independent groups who’ve come in and looked at the data, it’s important to use a fact base that everyone trusts.
So we’ve used claims data and compared like groups and shown that we can save over five hundred dollars per patient per month, and a large chunk of that is through medication elimination when people don’t need the drugs anymore, as well as some other cost savings by eliminating the need for additional specialist appointments and inpatient hospitalizations.
But ultimately we can run that data ourselves, but nobody trusts it in the same way as if a third party that’s highly credible comes in and pokes a bunch of holes in it and the data holds up to that scrutiny.
So we think that’s really important, and we invite that in everything we do, and we’re really appreciative that others have come in to put that kind of rigor into the analysis.
Addressing Health Equity in Diabetes Care with Virta Health
Validation Institute:
That’s great. You mentioned a little bit about rationing insulin, which sort of leads us into health equity. Health equity continues to be an important topic of conversation across healthcare.
What role does data play in uncovering inequities and gaps in outcome in your patient population, and what strategies have you deployed that have been successful in reducing disparities?”
Kevin Kumler:
I’m really glad you asked this one as it’s been a hot topic certainly over the last year or two, and nowhere are health equity issues more apparent than in type 2 diabetes.
I was recently just this past fall at the White House conference on hunger and nutrition, and Senator Cory Booker was calling out these disparities in really stark terms.
He pointed out that while half of our country, nearly half, has diabetes or prediabetes, the Black community is 77% more likely to end up with type 2 diabetes and twice as likely to die from it.
The Native American community has the highest prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the U.S., and some of our earliest customers were some of the tribal nations.
These impacted communities are more likely to be on medications and experience worse outcomes such as amputation, blindness, increased mortality, and these are all really well-documented underlying conditions around this chronic disease.
In addition, you have comorbid and co-related issues like food insecurity, and people who have type 2 diabetes are more likely to be rationing their medications in general due to cost than most other groups.
So, the big question is, what do you do about it once you know these health equity issues exist? For us, the innovations we’ve made in our care model have really helped us deliver a different level of outcome. First is equal access to providers.
Virta is a virtual healthcare provider, so we’re meeting patients where they are, in their homes through their smartphones, through their computer.
We don’t have to build a brick and mortar clinic in an impoverished area, find a way to staff it, and then get patients transported to it, which are all classic problems in healthcare to be able to deliver our care.
That’s one of the massive innovations. The second one is our nutritional therapy. We personalize it; it’s personalized based on your culture, your values, your preferences, and what your body tolerates, which is different for each of us.
We really think those two innovations in how we deliver care are why our outcomes, which we have published for health equity, we’re seeing the same level of impact across all groups.
So we’ve looked at area deprivation index, which is a measure of socioeconomic status, and found across all groups we’re able to both enroll them and have an impact, reverse their diabetes.
We’re finding across all racial groups we’re able to enroll them and have similar levels of impact, and we’ve published all of this as we do with all of our work on our website so people can go in and review it themselves.
Expanding Access to Diabetes Reversal Treatment at Virta Health
Validation Institute:
That’s amazing. Can I just ask, what’s next? How do you keep building on all the success that you’re having?
Kevin Kumler:
Really, the thing that keeps me up at night is access to this treatment as we just picked up on this question around health equity.
We’ve enrolled people in all groups, in all racial groups, and also economic groups, but some have enrolled disproportionately faster because we started with commercially insured, employer-based groups.
We’ve expanded into some government-based groups, working with veterans, working with Medicare, working some with Medicaid.
Really, it’s about giving as many Americans access to this treatment as possible so that reversal is not something that is accessible to some but really accessible to all. That’s how we’ll reach the mission of reversing type 2 diabetes in 100 million people.
Validation Institute:
Well, this is all amazing stuff, and Kevin, thank you for taking the time to educate me and so many others about diabetes inverter this morning.
If you’re an employer, broker, payer, or provider, I encourage you to learn more about Virta. You can do so by reading the validation report by going to www.validationinstitute.com. Thank you very much and have a great day.
