Every benefits stack has good players. MSK platforms, fertility benefits, mental health apps, chronic disease programs—each one does its job well. What most stacks don't have is anyone calling the plays.
In his latest LinkedIn article, OnMed CEO Karthik Ganesh argues that's the real reason so many digital health investments struggle to prove ROI. It isn't a lack of innovation, and it isn't a lack of demand for primary care. It's a shortage of the primary care workforce that once coordinated a patient's care across every specialist, program, and visit. Employers filled that gap with more point solutions, one condition at a time, with no one connecting any of it.
Ganesh compares it to running a team with no quarterback: talented players on the field, but no one who sees the whole game or ties the plays together. Each vendor can report on its own play—fewer PT visits, better glucose trends—but none of them can report the score: what happened to that employee's ER visits, absenteeism, or overall health six months later.
For HR leaders and benefit consultants under pressure to justify point-solution spend, that's the piece worth sitting with. Better ROI modeling may help quantify outcomes, but Ganesh argues it doesn't solve the underlying coordination gap. Restoring that coordinating role does.
Ganesh argues that the OnMed CareStation™ is designed to serve as that coordinating care presence. Rather than functioning as another point solution, he positions it as a consistent care presence capable of helping employees navigate care across providers, programs, and settings—giving every vendor already in the stack visibility into what happens after the visit, instead of each one reporting its own numbers in isolation.
In the article below, Ganesh makes the case that until employers solve the coordination problem, every point solution they buy is a bet placed without a scoreboard.
Read the full article below.
A woman stopped an OnMed Partner Impact Manager on the street outside a high school in rural Alabama. She didn't know her. She just recognized the vest. “I had not seen a doctor in 25 years,” she said, “until I came into a CareStation. Thank you for changing my life.”
Twenty-five years. Not because she didn't care about her health. Because nothing in her benefits stack ever reached her. Not the wellness app. Not the telehealth line buried in the open enrollment packet. Not the point solutions her employer paid six figures for. All of it existed. None of it found her, until a utility the size of a phone booth showed up where she already was.
That's the story every HR leader and every benefit consultant needs to sit with. Look at what's actually in most benefits stacks today. MSK platforms for joint and back pain. Fertility benefits for family building. Mental health apps for anxiety and depression. Diabetes programs for chronic disease. None of them lack innovation. Each one is genuinely good at what it was built to do. What none of them have is a place to prove it. Without a quarterback connecting what happens after the visit, every one of these programs is another expense on the benefits budget instead of a return on it.
The scale of that gap is bigger than most benefits strategies account for. 83 million Americans don't have a primary care doctor. 120 million have no viable access to everyday care at all. Without a quarterback, the emergency room becomes the default site of care — and employers pay for it. Non-emergent ER visits cost up to 12 times more than the same complaint treated in a primary or everyday care setting. That cost lands in next year's premium either way.
Here's what every benefit consultant already knows, and every CFO already suspects. An MSK vendor can show you fewer physical therapy visits. A diabetes platform can show you better glucose trends. Neither can show you what happened to that same employee's ER visits, absenteeism, or overall health six months later.
That gap isn't a data problem. It's a structural one. Primary care used to be the quarterback every specialist reported back to. We're running out of that person — half of physicians are over 55, and the country will be short 86,000 doctors by 2036. So, employers kept buying point solutions to fill the gap, one condition at a time, with no one connecting any of it. The ROI gets extrapolated, modeled, projected. It lives in a vendor deck, not a claims file.
This is exactly where the OnMed CareStation changes the math. It isn't another point solution competing for budget. It's the everyday care quarterback those point solutions have been missing. Every vendor already in the stack gets visibility into what happened next. Bidirectional...connected...provable data.
The results show up in numbers a CFO can actually use. Employers running CareStations save north of $1,100 per employee, before their wellness programs are even fully rolled out. Layer in absenteeism and productivity gains, and returns climb toward 12x. 78% of patients call the CareStation their medical home. 37% return within a year — a stickiness number no benefits program in America comes close to matching.
Digital health didn't fail because the innovation was weak. It stalled because nobody built the quarterback. Every point solution employers have bought this decade was a bet placed without a scoreboard. The CareStation is the scoreboard — primary, urgent, and post-acute, finally in one line of sight...a singular everyday care utility. Stop paying for outcomes you can't see. Put the quarterback back on the field.
To learn more about OnMed and Karthik Ganesh's leadership, visit our news and content page.
Follow along as we continue to redefine the healthcare landscape and bring the OnMed CareStation to communities across the U.S.
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