Dr. Thomas Schenk has experienced many sides of the medical industry.
He believes that new ideas can make health care simultaneously more accessible and more effective.
Schenk is a pediatrician by trade who spent the past seven years as chief medical officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Western New York, though he exited the company this year following its affiliation with Highmark Health.
Now he is joining a Buffalo-based startup, Ognomy, as chief strategy officer.
Founded by sleep medicine specialist Dr. Daniel Rifkin, Ognomy is a web-based way to diagnose and treat sleep apnea, a common problem that involves multiple site visits and specialists.
“Through the membership at Blue Cross Blue Shield, I was able to see how challenging it is for people with medical issues to get to the right place for the right care,” Rifkin said. “Ognomy is the exact kind of innovation in care that we need.”
The Buffalo-based startup company has raised a $1.37 million round of pre-seed funding this year as it expands across the U.S.
Along with Schenk, Ognomy also recently appointed Pete Grandits as chief financial officer. The Colden resident has extensive experience in financial executive roles, including as the former CFO of AP Wagner, a Buffalo-based distributor sold to a private equity firm in 2010.
Ognomy opens up markets on a state-by-state basis, partnering with a doctor who is licensed to do medicine there and then marketing its solution directly to patients. Ognomy leaders said earlier this year that more than 1,000 patients have already been treated through its platform in New York, Georgia, California and Arizona.
Schenk will bring his perspective on the constituencies that Ognomy could serve – including employers and insurance companies.
“At the end of the day, Ognomy is a broad network of sleep medicine doctors who enroll and treat people in a very streamlined way,” he said, “but there is an opportunity to package that value and bring it to employers and health plans, both big and small.”
Schenk is not full time at Ognomy yet, though that could change going forward. In the meantime, he is providing guidance to another health-tech company in Chicago and acting as an adviser for the Blue Venture Fund, which invests in startups with strategic promise to BCBS (he worked with both entities while he was full time at the health plan).
Schenk is also serving as interim director of the Population Health Collaborative, a Buffalo-based nonprofit that is focused on improving the collective health of Western New Yorkers.
Health-tech startups aren’t a new world for him, but becoming a key advisor for one such as Ognomy is still a novel experience.
“I’m excited for this,” he said. “This is an opportunity to be at the intersection of how people receive health care and making that care better.”
