Executive Summary

Ella Es Health was born out of CEO Vanessa Guzman’s frustration with the status quo of maternity care in the United States. 

Standard health care fails to understand who patients are and what’s important to them, including their cultural identity, spirituality, and health goals. We know that healthcare providers spend an average of 15 minutes with patients, missing the opportunity to provide personalized care, which could lead to more satisfied & activated patients, lower costs, improved outcomes, and a reduction in disparities, especially for underserved women of color. Ella Es (“She Is” in Spanish) Health is a women’s health company that’s building a new model of virtual, culturally-connected care and navigation for underserved women. Partnering with health plans, health systems, and employers, our virtual model empowers each woman in identifying their health goals and tailoring care plans based on their unique needs. Join us in investing in the future of women’s health.

Mission

Ella Es (“She Is” in Spanish) Health care integrates a women’s journey, story, and community. By understanding the essence of who she is right now and her future path, we can empower women to be healthy and thrive. Our mission is to advance health equity, reduce mortality, reduce disease progression, and improve quality for underserved women of color. 

The Opportunity

Healthcare providers want to provide the best care possible but are limited by existing care models, personal knowledge, and reimbursement systems. Patients and members want their healthcare concerns to be heard and to find solutions that work for them – wherever they are in their life stage.

Ella Es has identified multiple areas of opportunity: 

• Participate in a large market: The total addressable market is $789,600,000. This assumes that Ella Es Health is a good fit for all employers over 10,000 employees, and that there are 900 health insurance companies and 620 health systems (and an average deal size of $300,000) open to partnership.  
• Improve efficiency in patient care: Existing industry players are falling short. Hospitals and physician groups don't have enough time to provide the 1:1 coaching and engagement that women need. When women are prescribed medications, ordered tests, and referred to specialists without a single question about their health goals and how they wish to (and don’t wish to) receive care, they are less likely to follow through on treatment & care plans. 
• Go beyond existing virtual care: Other virtual care companies for women focus on specific health conditions and don’t make equity a focus of their offerings. Other digital health companies that are focused on culturally-competent care, don't focus on women. Across the board, healthcare organizations are fatigued by partnering with virtual care companies who can only address one health condition or population.
• Reduce healthcare costs: The U.S. economy loses ~$300 Billion (source) per year due to direct and indirect costs of health disparities. We know that culturally-competent care leads to increased trust, improved patient data collection, increased preventive care usage, and cost-savings (source).
• Advance value-based care: In 2021, Value-based payments made up 40% of total healthcare spending, and that’s growing (source). Full and partial risk arrangements lend themselves to cost-reduction efforts and increasing access to preventive services. The Commonwealth Fund recommends using value-based payments to incentivize use of equity-centered models, and bundled payments for maternity care reflects a shift that could spill into other conditions in the future. 
• Reduce unnecessary suffering. Women face unnecessary suffering, disease progression, mortality, and access barriers. As an example, 800 women die per day, globally, due to pregnancy and childbirth-related causes, including hemorrhages and infection. 1 in 10 women of reproductive age is estimated to have endometriosis (growth of endometrial tissue outside the uterus), which can cause debilitating pelvic pain and infertility. Women know their bodies. Listening to them can lead to earlier detection of disease and lifestyle interventions and treatments that can reduce morbidity. 

The Ella Es Health Solution

Ella Es Health provides Lifestyle Health Coaches and Care Navigators that focus on each individual women's unique, unmet health needs and partners with the existing healthcare system (healthcare providers, health plans, and employers). Our Lifestyle Health Coaches are culturally competent extensions of nurses, doctors, and advanced practice providers. By assessing cultural identity, communication, nutrition, health behaviors/practices, spirituality, and Social Determinants of Health, our Health Coaches build customized care plans for each person. 

Ella Es Health offers pathways focused on:

• Maternal Care
• Menopause
• Fertility
• Gynecology and Gynecological Infections
• Chronic conditions for which the risk factors, interventions, and complications are more serious among women or some subgroups of women.

While we are focused on serving all women, we are particularly focused on underserved women, given our experience as co-founders, and that these populations often experience disparate outcomes. 

Why Lifestyle Health Coaches?

Lifestyle Health coaches use evidence-based conversations and strategies in behavior change that improves health. Health coaches help clients achieve their goals and empower them to integrate healthy habits into their lifestyles. 

Our Unique Approach to Health Coaching:

• Provides women with the confidence, knowledge, motivation and skills to become active participants in their own care and achieve their self-identified health goals.
• Empower women to take action, identify their needs and seek appropriate resources most relevant at each stage of life. 
• Build tailored pathways to support women with lifestyle matters, such as self-care, physical and emotional health, medication adherence, mental health, and life transitions.

Business Model

Ella Es Health is a new virtual care company filling an open space in the market. The portfolio of virtual services will include Lifestyle Health Coaches and Care Navigators, and we will offer this service directly to healthcare providers, health plans, and employers, who will make Ella Es’ offering available to their patients, members, and employees. 

Our pricing model consists of three components: fixed implementation fee, fixed partnership access fee, and Per-Member-Per-Month fee based upon the actual members or patients that we work with. We believe that by 2026, we could achieve $6,000,000 in revenue and over 20 customers. Future projections are not guaranteed.

Investment Plans and Future Goals

This investment will enable us to hire Health Coaches and personnel to support customer contracts, product design & development, marketing research & development, and WeFunder fees. Specifically, this includes developing and testing our coaching scripts, workflow development for referrals, and building a clickable prototype for a patient/member-facing application.

Brighter Future

Our mission is to empower women in their health by providing culturally-connected, agile and navigable virtual care. Investing in our approach to wholistic women's health will bridge the silos of her mental, sociological and clinical health creating not only a healthier woman, but an even healthier community.

We are excited for you to join us in this journey!