Q&A: Michael Uchrin, Monogram Health

Brentwood-based Monogram Health seeks to provide a modern version of those old-fashioned doctor house calls. 

The health care system is set up to focus on each condition a person has on a standalone basis — nephrologist for kidney issues and endocrinologist for diabetes, and so on. Employing its own physicians, Monogram seeks to bring multi-speciality providers to the home, in an effort to cut down on doctor visits. 

Founded by former Sen. Bill Frist and Michael Uchrin and initially focusing on kidney care, their average patient has eight conditions, sees seven physicians, and has eight medications from five or more of those physicians. Most of them are seniors with Medicare Advantage dealing with conditions like renal disease, cardiovascular disease, COPD, diabetes, and hypertension. Monogram practitioners also assist patients in access to healthy food, transportation and finances, with 24/7 availability. 

It was enough to earn the company a nod from Inc. Magazine as one of the country’s fastest-growing companies this year. (Local company RxLogic also made that list.) 

Read more from the Williamson Scene sister publication the Nashville Post's conversation with Uchrin, the current CEO of Monogram, below. 

For the past four years, you’ve expanded beyond just kidney disease. What prompted that change for you? 

We analyzed the characteristics of the patient population, and they had a lot more conditions than just kidney [disease], and they were seeing a lot of other providers. There was a tremendous number of unmet clinical needs that our patients were experiencing, not to mention the phenomenon that we coined as specialist fatigue. With so many different specialists that our patients had to see in order to stabilize their care, we really have to be able to be in a position where we expand our clinical scope of practice to be able to treat all of the prevalent conditions that an average Monogram patient has developed. 

Because our patients are complex, they have a multitude of conditions. They're pretty frail and vulnerable, and mobility is a huge issue. We also don't discern between urban and rural areas. A lot of our patients live in rural areas like the deep South, where they struggle to get to clinics and keep their appointments. We’re able to meet them where they are. 

We're able to train our physicians and our nurse practitioners to truly deliver multi-specialty care. And it becomes — because it's fully integrated — better care for our patients, and also it gets back to really providing a sense of purpose for our physicians, because they're able to carry out the care that really was the reason for them going into medicine in the first place — to truly treat and take care of another human being. 

Tell me more about the founding of this company and how you brought your past experience to it. 

My background was in running health plans, so everything from Medicare Advantage to Medicaid to marketplace health plans. I really saw the cookie-cutter care plans that a majority of complex and really sick populations were receiving and saw the poor outcomes being generated by siloed care. I was very fortunate to partner with former Senate Majority Leader and former heart-lung transplant surgeon Bill Frist to create a next-generation multi-specialty provider to meet all of the clinical care needs of the current generation of Medicare Advantage seniors. 

With [former] Senator Frist being the chair of our board, we are very much physician-led. 

Have there been any changes with Medicare Advantage that have allowed the company to grow more quickly?

Yes, so I think within that, it’s really meeting the needs of the patient — right time, right place. CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) is focused on improving care delivery for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries who have chronic conditions, who have kidney disease. The best part about this and the intersection of this is that Monogram has been focused on this for the previous six years. It’s really able to draft off of CMS’s renewed commitment for seniors with chronic conditions, inclusive of kidney as well as cardiometabolic conditions. 

To what would you attribute the company taking off right now, and making the Inc. list?

It is truly putting our patients front and center and meeting their clinical needs and transforming the way care is delivered. We are integrating care across their conditions, not treating each of their conditions in a silo or in a one-off way, via disparate specialists or physicians.

This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.