The story of Nomi begins with a prequel. mark Newman started HireView as a college student at Westminster. For 13 years, he changed the way potential employees were interviewed at the largest companies in the country. It took a conversation in a labor and delivery room to give Mark a higher view of how he could use his skillset to fix healthcare. He hired himself to solve the problem, and then he onboarded 1,600 more teammates. Nomi Health is in the business of lowering costs of healthcare, increasing the payout for healthcare providers, and paying off medical debt for those who had already been caught in the unfair matrix of healthcare costs. to date, Nomi has purchased and retired $250 million of medical debt. Mark’s prescription is just what the doctor ordered.
All of my stories start with … “This one time in the delivery room …”
We were in the Timpanogos Hospital when my first child was born. We were 30, which is old to start a family by Utah County standards. A woman came into the room to talk to us about our hospital bill, which was $4,500. I handed her my card to pay in full, and she informed me that I would be given a 30 percent discount.
Because I had money, I got a lower price. How broken is that? I was angry. Everyone thinks we’re dealing with a healthcare problem. But it’s not a healthcare problem — it’s a process, flow and technology problem. I couldn’t get over our conversation. I started shaking. It’s just not right.
This moment felt like the Matrix to me. I could take one pill and keep living life, or I could take the other pill and jump into the matrix. I chose to jump into the matrix of U.S. healthcare.
Ironically, who did we serve at HireView? Every major HR leader. These are also the biggest buyers of healthcare in the world, and I knew almost every single one of them.
The day that my second child was born was my last day at HireView. I didn’t know if I wanted to build another company. But healthcare problems weren’t going away, and I knew the hack. It was a simple play in my mind.
Seventy percent of Americans don’t have $1,000 to their name and yet the average medical deductible is $4,500. That simple problem gums up the entire healthcare system. There has not been the correct business model because we’ve deferred too much power to the insurance companies. Any organization would gladly trade an immediate payment for that 30 percent lower price. And the employer has plenty of money to pay.
Providing the world’s best direct healthcare meant rewiring the entire system. We weren’t afraid to take that on. We had to connect the real buyers of healthcare — which are employers, states and counties — directly with providers of care who deliver services to the people they are responsible for.
The sickest patient on the planet is the U.S. healthcare system. We had to rebuild the rails that it runs on. The system is broken, outdated, slow and unfair. Nomi is becoming the platform and infratructure to run the modern U.S. healthcare system.
When we were about to have our third kid in March 2020, I had to get a Covid test so I could be in the delivery room. I tried to figure out how to get tested, but I was told tests were scarce and they were only testing sick people. Did I have to lie and say I was sick in order to get tested and see the birth of my child? Health care is not a system built on agility.
Nomi figured it out. We came up with a system to test Utahns using local tech and traditional good business processes. I’m proud to say that Utah was named the state that handled the pandemic the best. We know how to solve problems in Utah. If it snows at the Salt Lake Airport, planes still fly. In other cities, a skiff of snow shuts down everything.
Nomi is now operating at the scale of a public company. Through our acquisition strategy and organic growth, we’re headed toward our goal of being an existential threat to the U.S. healthcare system.
The sickest patient on the planet is the U.S. healthcare system. We had to rebuild the rails that it runs on.