Keeping Elderly Care Honest: How Jacquelyn Kung’s ‘Activated Insights’ Is Transforming A Healthcare Sector, Notoriously Plagued By Blindspots

The Female Founder of one of Inc. 5000's Fastest-Growing Companies is Exacting Powerful Change With Data-Driven Technology. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) September 09, 2022 - "Activated Insights" founder, Jacquelyn Kung is on her third healthcare tech start-up. This latest venture is focused on a category of the healthcare space that is often overlooked, the one that serves the over-65 years of age group, which makes up half of the $4 trillion-dollar+ healthcare spend in the United States annually.

Activated Insights is profoundly changing the way we assess the integrity of elder care facilities, and the company’s work not only benefits the consumer side – but it also gives an under-the-hood look at how employees are treated at these facilities in a segment of our healthcare system that arguably suffers most from its inherent blindspots.

The marriage of Dr. Jacquelyn Kung’s Harvard smarts and a conviction to create change in a sector that has always fallen by the wayside feels impenetrable. Raising her two children in Dallas, Texas, Kung is grateful to be able to spend time with her septuagenarian parents who brought her here, as they live out their twilight years. The daughter of Asian immigrant parents who were farmers by trade when they left China after the tumultuous Communist revolution and after Nixon opened up China in the late 1970s, the family first lived along the Arctic Circle in Norway. Kung’s father, who had skipped high school to work in the farm fields, taught himself Norwegian and English in order to earn a Ph.D. in computer science. Kung recalls having a computer in their house in the early 1980s when the word computer was not part of the daily vernacular. Computer tech is in her blood, and she has pursued it with vigor. After earning a scholarship to Harvard for college, then later one to Harvard Business School, Kung’s employer saw her potential and supported her through a doctorate from the Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Kung was locked and loaded to take on the burgeoning, male-centric tech boom.

Kung’s first tech start-up, ClearCare was sold to TPG for $235 million and still supports the at-home care of over one million people per year. Her second was a self-proclaimed failure. This third is Activated Insights, which has quickly surpassed ClearCare in terms of platform users.

As Kung describes, Activated Insights came about “both because we saw a need to elevate the workforce in aging services and because of fortuitous catch-up with a friend. We first tried to buy a company in this space, but that fell through because the couple who owned it were divorcing and couldn’t agree with each other. I was crying to my friend that senior care in the U.S. needed more and better technology to spur innovation in a much-needed way. That’s when my friend leaned over her cup of tea and asked if we might be interested in meeting the CEO of Great Place to Work Institute, whose work is well-known for data that has powered Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work for List, the gold standard of best workplace assessments, for nearly three decades. Within weeks, we had a partnership in place with Great Place to Work and a new list with Fortune to showcase the best workplaces in aging services. We were off to the races. We were going to come up with solutions for the industry. And of course, COVID happened and the underbelly of the aging services was shown bleakly to everyone. We have a lot of work to do.”

“It is news to no one that the U.S. healthcare industry is flawed in many aspects. Historically, we have thrown more people at the problem. Can you believe that out of 17 people who work at a hospital, 9 are non-clinical, meaning most workers at a hospital do not care for patients? They’re pushing paper. They’re pushing hospital beds. They’re not bedside with the patient. Then, you turn to senior care. And here, you see that employee turnover is now over 80%. Everyone says ‘pay them more!’ But nobody says ‘charge me more to help pay for the higher wages.’ So how do you solve a problem like that? The only way is through innovation with data-driven technology.”
Jacquelyn Kung, Founder, Activated Insights

What Activated Insights has done is quietly built a far-reaching platform. With a market share of close to 50% in some sectors of aging services, the company is unique in that it touches every part of senior care, from employees to seniors themselves, to family members. Because Medicare, Medicaid, and government payers have over a dozen payment systems, a different sector has sprung up around each one, whether you are getting home health or nursing home care or rehabilitation care. So little coordination exists. And this is the sector of healthcare that needs coordination the most - especially since one in five elders who leave the hospital end up right back in a hospital bed within days.

With clients who are famously technology-fearful that rave about how easy the technology is to use, Activated Insights is positioned for the future. Its 365% revenue growth, even during COVID, landing a coveted spot on the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies list, Activated Insights is rapidly growing, profitable, and prepared for another year of significant expansion.

'Activated Insights': Quick Stats

· 365% Growth Rate

· Company Has Never Received Venture Capital Dollars

● Ranked #1705 at Top Percentile of Inc. 5000’s Fastest Growing Companies List
● Female Minority-Owned and Operated
● Stable workforce - almost no attrition. Fortune 500 Best Companies, Ranked 95 out of 100 on the Culture Scale (benchmark is 87)
● Over a million users on the platform
● Completely Remote Workforce, Pre-Pandemic

The future ahead is bright - on the business side, it’s greater profitability and greater growth. On the product side, it’s innovation - taking problems one at a time that plagues the senior living industry and figuring out new ways to solve them with technology (and not more people).

With technology that is cutting-edge and nimble: “I won't bore you with it, but in a nutshell, you will never see a ‘scheduled maintenance: system down for maintenance" message from our platform. Leave that unsexy part to us. We will transform this low-energy sector of our healthcare system that is desperate for change. Mark my words.”

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