How healthcare startup Violet is tackling health disparities

The term “health disparities” has become more common in recent years as the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated and highlighted disparities that have long existed in the US healthcare system—and they’re putting a massive economic burden on the US.

Health disparities cost the economy $451 billion in 2018, according to a 2023 study funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Enter: Violet. 

In 2020, CEO Gaurang Choksi founded healthcare startup Violet, which aims to tackle health disparities by identifying and increasing the number of clinicians providing culturally competent care.

Choksi defines culturally competent care as the kind in which providers advocate for their patients, teach their patients about health disparities that disproportionately affect them, and provide preventive screenings to curb those disparities as much as possible.

“It’s really a provider that can advocate for you based on your identities,” he said.

Culturally competent care as a skill set

Oftentimes, culturally competent care is seen as something that can only be provided by clinicians who identify as part of an underrepresented group, Choksi said. The problem is clinicians in the US aren’t diverse enough.

For example, per the US Census Bureau, 32% of people in the US are reportedly Black or Latino but only 12% of providers in the US identify as being part of these two groups, so it’s unlikely that every patient can receive care from a clinician who looks like them.

“If the healthcare industry doesn’t make it easy for that 32% of our country to get to an inclusive doctor—and keeps supporting the idea that the best doctor for you is the one that looks like you—what ends up happening is people are going to delay care,” Choksi said. The other problem, he said, is that providers from underrepresented groups feel “burnt out because [...] they work overtime to make sure they can actually meet the needs of their communities.”

So, Violet views culturally competent care as a skill set that any provider can possess. The company’s goal is to identify which providers have those skills so healthcare organizations can match those providers to patients. Violet’s online platform also has more than 130 training courses that teach providers how to provide culturally competent care, with more courses added each quarter.

Kay Nikiforova, head of clinical and research at Violet, said that “the goal is to upskill the whole team so that no one provider has to hold the burden of that care.”

“Both the providers and patients are happier because the supply and demand mismatch is addressed,” Choksi added.

How does Violet work?

Violet pulls claims data from Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial payers, which gives the company information on things like where a provider has worked before and what patient populations they’ve treated. The company has a database with information on 500,000+ providers, according to Choksi.

When clinicians go through Violet’s onboarding process, they’re shown all the information Violet has on them, and they can edit and add to it. Violet also asks the clinicians a series of questions on the communities they’ve treated and studied as well as the groups they belong to.

After collecting the information, Violet’s platform puts it through an algorithm that ranks the clinician on their ability to provide culturally competent care.

What the clinicians get in return is a suite of educational resources and training on things like how to properly conduct depression screenings in BIPOC-majority communities or how to provide care for gender-nonconforming patients, Choksi said.

Violet has a few thousand active providers on its platform, according to Choksi. The company works with all sorts of health organizations, from traditional health systems like New York-based Northwell Health to payers and virtual behavioral health companies like Brightline.

To date, Violet has raised $5.3 million in seed funding. According to Choksi, the company makes money in three ways: measuring and assessing the inclusivity of its partners, helping grow their partners’ quality of care, and helping partners showcase their inclusivity while growing their business. Choksi declined to give details on how much Violet’s partner contracts are worth or the cost of Violet for partners.

Case studies

By using Violet’s platform, Octave, a behavioral health company with more than 750 providers, was able to identify 145% more providers who can provide culturally competent care, according to a case study Violet published in May 2023.

As a result, Octave saw patient retention rates rise by 14% one month after the first session, and the company was able to better match patients to providers more quickly.

“Violet has helped us better understand our clinician competencies, which allows us to strengthen the therapist-client match,” Golee Abrishami, VP of clinical care at Octave, said in a statement.

Brightline said it was able to increase its capacity to provide inclusive care by 300% after partnering with Violet.

Northwell plans to start using Violet’s platform this year to train clinicians on how to provide culturally competent care, Milind Parate, managing director of ventures at Northwell Holdings, the health system’s venture investment arm, told Healthcare Brew.

Northwell Holdings invested an undisclosed amount in Violet’s seed funding round in 2021. Parate said the goal for Northwell is to “provide better care for patients.”

“Cultural competency of clinicians, inclusivity of underrepresented groups—that’s top of mind for Northwell Health as an institution,” he said. “[The goal] is to enable clinicians who aspire to be more culturally competent with the tools to treat patients in such a way that aligns more with the patient’s needs.”