Behind the Scenes: Why We Acquired Docent Health

From GetWellNetwork’s first days, we’ve held true to one central belief: a more active and involved patient is a better, healthier patient. For 20 years, we’ve been innovating and improving on the concept of patient engagement, with the patient at the forefront of our minds. 

Every decision we’ve made, from product improvements to strategic corporate acquisitions, has been done to help both patient and provider address the patient’s care in a way that feels personalized and empathetic to their needs, whatever those may be.

We’re proud to work with 700+ client sites and facilitate over 50M+ patient interactions per year. And now, in 2021, we’re also proud to expand our impact on patients and communities through GetWellNetwork’s acquisition of Docent Health, an enterprise consumer engagement platform that enables healthcare organizations to coordinate personalized care at scale.

Simply put: bringing our companies together makes GetWellNetwork a more powerful organization. It provides an opportunity for us to expand our tools, widen our networks, and better reach the organizations and patients that need our help.

Curious to find out more about this decision? Here’s the “why”…

An expansive reach for those who need us

With the addition of Docent Health, we are excited to not only add the ability to leverage intelligent, real-time text messaging to reduce leakage and make it easier for patients to receive care across episodes, but also to drive meaningful outcomes for communities most in need.

Proven success in a growing field

Since being founded in 2015, Docent Health has enabled:

  • 1.7M+ patient interactions
  • 4-7x ROI
  • 13+ clinical programs
  • 90+ client sites

These remarkable outcomes haven’t happened in a vacuum — marquee partners such as CommonSpirit, Sutter Health, Northwell Health, and OhioHealth have been integral to Docent Health’s success. We are excited to continue serving these strategic innovators while extending and integrating the Docent Health capabilities into GetWellNetwork solutions.

In line with our mission, in step with our future

GetWellNetwork has always been committed to empowering patients and families to become active participants in their care by bringing the right information to the point of need. 

With the addition of Docent Health’s Artificial Intelligence-driven communication technology, we will be able to ensure that we can now meet every patient at that point of need, every time, no matter where it happens to be.

A boon for healthcare providers

While patients will benefit from personalized care, providers also have much to gain from the integration of Docent Health’s technology into GetWellNetwork’s offerings:

  • More flexible ways to communicate with patients: Healthcare organizations will be able to reach patients in innovative new ways, including through personalized and AI-enabled text messaging.
  • New methods of bringing patients back into their network: Rather than focusing solely on active episodes of care, healthcare systems will have proven methods of bringing patients back for future episodes.
  • Unique insights about patients: Organizations will be able to personalize and coordinate communications using unique patient insights, including social determinants of health, that are stored in a central patient profile.

With GetWellNetwork’s expressed goal of helping patients better engage with their own healthcare journeys, the acquisition and integration of Docent Health’s game-changing technology puts us all a step further along the path to helping patients and healthcare organizations thrive. 

So, what happens next?

This acquisition underscores our commitment to reaching patients where they are and providing support to our healthcare partners as they carry out their own missions. Clients will soon benefit from the addition of Docent Health’s award-winning technology offerings and services. It’ll be an exciting journey, and one that will help patients and communities alike.

Best is ahead,

Michael O’Neil
Founder + CEO, GetWellNetwork