It’s among the fastest-growing healthcare providers in the United States, and it’s bringing an approach more like Spain’s – one that features integrated services focused on prevention. The aim is to keep people healthy and out of the hospital, reducing long-term medical costs.
Sanitas may not be a household name in Miami yet, but the company that started in Spain and expanded to the U.S. from Colombia is quickly building a following in Florida, Puerto Rico, New Jersey, and Texas as it expands nationwide. It now boasts more than 500,000 members in the U.S., mostly in Florida. And it employs at least 3,000 people in the U.S., including 400 in the city of Doral, where it runs its U.S. headquarters and its round-the-clock telemedicine division.
Sanitas entered the U.S. market in 2014 through an alliance with Guidewell, the parent company of insurer Florida Blue. Guidewell was looking for a partner to provide healthcare for U.S. Hispanics through U.S. government-assisted programs. Sanitas, which launched in Spain in the 1970s, had long been successful in Colombia and other Latin American nations. The partners started small, with three centers in Florida, but with a grand vision to offer a different style of healthcare – not the usual fee-for-service U.S. model, but one based on health outcomes. The goal is to improve results in the U.S., which spends the most in the world on healthcare per person, but produces results below European counterparts that spend far less.
“One of the big problems in U.S. healthcare is fragmentation,” with providers in varied private groups referring patients to specialists in other groups and not always following up, says Ignacio Arbeity, CEO of the Sanitas unit in the U.S. “Our biggest concern is patient satisfaction. We call and follow up. We try to find solutions for your condition, so you don’t end up in the hospital, where the costs explode.” Sanitas receives bonuses from insurers if patients stay healthy and out of hospitals, he says.
Sanitas hails from a country where health care is deemed a right, and nearly all services are provided at government facilities, paid through taxes. Spain’s government uses its leverage to negotiate prices for supplies, helping keep costs down. Care is essentially free, with co-pays only for prescription drugs. Co-pays end when patients become seniors, Arbeity says. In contrast, the U.S. system is about 85 percent private, with co-pays for nearly everything – even for seniors with government-backed Medicare.
Spain also offers greater access to doctors than the U.S. It has roughly 4.4 doctors for every 1,000 residents, compared to 2.6 per 1,000 residents in the U.S. Costs for healthcare also differ greatly. In 2021, Spain spent roughly 10 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on healthcare, compared to 18 percent in the U.S.
For Sanitas, starting up in the U.S. has been easier than for many Spanish companies, because Florida Blue and other U.S insurers handle much of their marketing. Plans call for doubling its U.S. footprint every few years. “We want to provide capacity to those who need it when they need it,” says Arbeity, “in a system that’s not fragmented but intelligent.”
