Former OptumHealth CFO Brings 3-Pronged Growth Strategy To Included Health

Mark Flakne learned a lot while at Optum. Now he's moving onto new projects as CFO of Included Health, a virtual care provider. 

In a significant move within healthcare finance, Mark Flakne, formerly the chief financial officer of OptumHealth, has embarked on a new journey as the CFO of Included Health. Included Health, founded in 2020 from the merger of Doctor on Demand and Grand Rounds, provides a combination of virtual care, navigation, and communities-based healthcare.

Flakne, known for his strategic skills in driving revenue growth and financial stability, is geared up to apply his extensive expertise to Included Health’s rapidly expanding digital health offerings.

During his eleven years at OptumHealth, Flakne played a pivotal role in transforming the hospital's financial landscape. Prior to his role there Flakne said he had no prior healthcare experience and OptumHealth acted as the gateway to his understanding of the healthcare industry. 

“That's actually where I really grew up in healthcare,” Flakne said. “I developed my passion around healthcare from being part of that for those eleven years, and it also is where I was able to really develop my love and understanding of value based care. So that really was a big part of it.” 

Under his leadership, the company achieved a 28% increase in annual revenue growth taking it from $21 billion to more than $70 billion.

A Three-Pronged Approach

Flakne’s strategy to sustain revenue growth is broken down into three steps. 

“The first and probably the most important is you need to have an experience that the member loves,” he said. “So if you do have a product, you know that people don't like, we all know what happens.“So for us, it's about having that experience that a member loves to use and be part of.”

The second part of this strategy is examining the question: “how can I reach more members?”

“Whether that be reaching them in more services and products in the ways that they're interacting with the healthcare system. But it's also reaching more members from other avenues. So think of the public sector or think of other market spaces, seniors, those sort of different groups of populations.”

Lastly, Flakne says, develop an appreciation and understanding of value-based care. 

“I think it's about how you can participate in their arrangements to drive the right outcomes but also benefit from a financial perspective. And so it also goes to how you structure your financial arrangements.”

Expanding Care

Flakne expressed his interest in Included Health stemmed from the potential he saw in the company, and how many members it could reach with its innovative care model. 

“There's such a great opportunity for us just to reach so many more members and also more ways that we can reach them,” he said. “There's more opportunity in how we interact with them, as well as new members that we're not even interacting with today. And so that's been really exciting to see that we're getting started, but we're already producing the results that we hope to produce.”