Virtual Care Through Insurance Coverage
Brendan Keeler, Senior PM at Zus Health, on building infrastructure for digital health
This marks a shift from selling virtual care as a special employer benefit to selling it like any other medical practice. Instead of waiting through long insurer and employer sales cycles, startups can join payer networks, tell patients they are covered by existing insurance, and grow through patient acquisition. That favors companies with strong consumer marketing and local care operations, not just enterprise sales teams.
-
The core trade changes from boardroom selling to ground game execution. A startup gets credentialed with health plans, shows up as in network, then wins patients visit by visit through search, referrals, and repeat use, much closer to how a normal clinic grows.
-
This was a response to payer overload. Virtual first vendors were piling into plans and employers with narrowly defined programs, and buyers had trouble sorting dozens of point solutions. Traditional coverage sidesteps that bottleneck by using the insurance rails patients already have.
-
The market has since produced clear examples of this model. Midi Health built a virtual menopause clinic around insurance reimbursement, while Maven stayed more employer and benefits led. The difference is not just pricing, it is channel. One grows patient demand against covered visits, the other sells a packaged benefit to HR and payers.
The next phase of digital health looks more like rebuilding specialty care on modern software than inventing endless new benefits. The winners will be the companies that can get in network fast, make the visit feel easier than an offline clinic, and then turn insurance coverage into durable patient volume across adjacent specialties.