Best Buy aims to bring the Geek Squad to healthcare

Forget about fixing personal computers. Best Buy’s Geek Squad is taking its talents into the home to connect remote patient monitoring devices with hospitals.

Like many other traditional retail companies, the Richfield, Minnesota-based company is staking its claim in healthcare. Executives are confident about plans to sell at-home healthcare technology and service to hospitals and insurance companies, but regulatory challenges and long sales cycles could be roadblocks in Best Buy's path to success.

“As a consumer-oriented company, they’ve historically been focused on consumers and consumer electronics. Shifting to a strategy where you need to sell into enterprise customers, and enterprises where the sales cycle is almost a year, that's got to be difficult,” said Sari Kaganoff, general manager of consulting at Rock Health, a digital health advisory firm.

Best Buy’s expansion into healthcare hasn’t happened overnight. It has acquired GreatCall, a mobile medical alert company, for $800 million in 2018; Critical Signal Technologies, a senior remote monitoring service, in 2019 for an undisclosed amount; and Current Health, a hospital-at-home tech company, for $400 million in October 2021. Deborah DiSanzo, formerly a general manager at IBM Watson Health, was hired to lead Best Buy's health division in September 2020.

The company’s chief operating officer, Chemu Langat, said it knows what it’s good at and hasn’t shied away from its roots.

“We’re not a healthcare provider,” said Langat, who came to Best Buy in June 2021 from Medtronic. “We are the plumbing that connects this ecosystem of care. It’s not necessarily the sexiest part of healthcare, but one of the most fundamental gaps that we have today.”

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Virtual care ambitions

Langat said Best Buy is leaning into core capabilities of supply chain and logistics, data analytics and consumer wellness products. The company sells heart monitors, blood pressure monitors, wearables and connected fitness devices. It also started selling over-the-counter hearing aids in mid-October. In its third quarter earnings call, CEO Corie Sue Barry said Best Buy would sell hearing aids in more than 300 stores and had introduced an online hearing assessment tool.

The ability to sell to consumers may be an advantage as Best Buy builds up its virtual care business, said Miriam Sznycer-Taub, director of aging population research at the Washington D.C.-based research firm Advisory Board. She said the company has sold connected fitness and health devices, which means it wouldn’t be a huge leap for people receiving at-home care.

“Best Buy is working to develop relationships and build up their customer base on the provider and the health plan side,” Sznycer-Taub said. “And their ability to sell into consumers should help because they’re a very well-known brand.”

The virtual care business combines capabilities from the GreatCall (which was renamed Lively) and Current Health acquisitions. Through Lively, patients receiving healthcare at home are connected to nurses 24/7. Through Current,  different remote monitoring and connected devices are integrated into a single clinical platform that’s monitored by health systems providing care at home services.

The business also supplies technology, such as its remote monitoring and medication management devices, to patients engaged in at-home care programs through hospitals and health insurance companies. The company also provides support on the product technology as it has done traditionally for consumer electronics through Geek Squad.

In its third-quarter earnings call, Barry said Best Buy had struck partnerships with NYU Langone Health, Mount Sinai Health and Geisinger Health. Geisinger is launching a Geek Squad pilot service that will help set up equipment and educate consumers on the technology. Along with health systems and insurers, Langat said Best Buy works with pharma companies to deliver medication at the home.

During the earnings call, executives noted that revenue contribution for the virtual care service is small and would take time to ramp up.

Long lead times are common when selling into health systems that are unfamiliar territory for a consumer-based company like Best Buy. Kaganoff said the company should lean into its consumer roots even more than it has already.

“They’re good at having a retail space and having people come in to learn about certain technologies,” Kaganoff said. “Even if they didn’t open a clinic, maybe they could open an information center to teach people about the different technologies around healthcare.”

Reimbursement uncertainty

The company’s healthcare presence comes as providers and insurance companies, primarily through their Medicare Advantage plans, invest in care at home, Sznycer-Taub said.

“Best Buy Health has found themselves squarely in the intersection of those two trends,” Sznycer-Taub said. “And they can really leverage their background of providing good customer support, being a trusted name to consumers and having the technology to work directly with health systems and plans.”

One big challenge for Best Buy and others in the care-at-home technology space is uncertainty around reimbursement. Reimbursement rates for the Current Procedural Terminology codes of remote patient monitoring are in flux as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently proposed a 12% cut in reimbursement.

Also, the acute hospital at home waiver is tied to the COVID-19 public health emergency. When those waivers run out, organizations including UMass Memorial (which is a customer of Current Health) said they might have to run a scaled back hospital-at-home program.

“We're not in a situation where we could continue down the same route without the waivers and without the reimbursement,” said Justin T. Precourt, chief nursing officer at UMass Memorial. “So, we are looking at alternative models, which would be a bit different from what we've been doing.”

Sznycer-Taub said there is enough momentum in Medicare Advantage to build a reimbursement strategy for hospital-at-home programs. Many health systems are lobbying for an extension in the hospital-at-home waiver or the chance to try out a permanent model through Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.

“We've been working with a number of payers to serve them with our urgent response services, health and safety services and with social care programs, along with the remote patient monitoring,” Langat said. “We think there’s a lot of opportunity.”

This story first appeared in Digital Health Business & Technology.