Thyme Care, a value-based cancer care navigation startup, announced several new strategic partners across the payer and provider spectrum.
The startup, founded in 2020, helps guide patients through the complex and grueling cancer care journey. It partners with payers, employers and risk-bearing providers to help reduce costs while improving outcomes.
One of its newer partners is EmblemHealth, a nonprofit plan in New York. The two have been working together since the fall of 2024. So far, Thyme is focused on the plan’s Medicare Advantage patients, but is also in active discussions with the plan on its commercial side, according to executives. Once a partner’s member has a claim indicating they are going through cancer, Thyme gets looped in to support the patient. Its services include helping get patients to appointments, educating them on their diagnosis, proactively monitoring their side effects, and more.
Nearly a third of Emblem members with cancer receive care with Thyme’s oncology partners, like New York Cancer and Blood Specialists, though Thyme supports all members of a given plan regardless of where they are treated.
“When a member is at our Thyme Care oncology-partnered practice, we are able to collaborate with the practice and help address those goals for the patients,” Thyme Care president and COO Brad Diephuis, M.D., told Fierce Healthcare.
Other partners include Oak Street Health, which went live with Thyme at the start of 2024, and Vytalize Health. Both are risk-bearing primary care groups. The collaborations streamline patient referrals to oncologists, improve patient care coordination and reduce unnecessary drug spend, according to Diephuis.
“We get to take amazing primary care services that are delivered by Oak Street… and supplement with a specialized team from Thyme Care that is specifically focusing on supporting those members during their cancer care journey,” Diephuis said. Thyme is supporting the more than 3,000 Oak Street members going through cancer care on average per month.
In the traditional healthcare system, when a primary care patient gets referred to an oncology practice for treatment, “it’s a bit of a black box,” Diephuis noted. The PCP may not have great visibility into that patient’s care journey, leading to missed opportunities to intervene for better outcomes. “Absent a service like Thyme Care, there’s often not great coordination between that member’s oncologist and their primary care doctor.”
With the latest partners, Thyme expects to quadruple the number of lives covered, reaching more than 40,000 people with cancer in 2025. Thyme launched its oncology partner platform in March. Since then, the number of oncologists in the network has more than doubled. Thyme’s partnership with American Oncology Network to support its patients under CMS’s Enhancing Oncology Model has resulted in $2.5 million in projected savings across pharmacy interventions spanning six months.
American Oncology Network CMO Stephen Divers, M.D., called the partnership with Thyme “instrumental” to their success in the EOM model. “Over the past year, Thyme Care’s Care Team has worked seamlessly with our oncologists and clinic staff to improve the patient experience, while their insights and analytics have helped us better understand the meaningful savings we’re generating,” Divers said in a press release.
In July, the company raised $95 million in a series C round. That was predicated on the company reaching certain targets that they have now successfully hit heading into 2025, per Diephuis. “Independent of any administration change, the growth that we are seeing overall I think is reflective of a growing need across the healthcare ecosystem,” Diephuis said.
The company plans to announce new partners across payers, at-risk primary care groups and employers in 2025, said Diephuis, who expects demand to keep growing: “The market is hungry for solutions that can deliver that value proposition.”
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