How Ventric and Stellus Rx Are Rewiring Primary Care for Heart Failure

PASADENA, Calif. – November 12, 2026 — In the complex machinery of modern healthcare, the breakdown rarely happens because of a lack of medical knowledge. Instead, it happens in the logistics of delivery. We know exactly how to treat early-stage heart failure, yet thousands of patients slip through the cracks of the primary care system every year, landing in emergency rooms with acute symptoms that could have been prevented.

Today, Ventric Health and Stellus Rx announced a strategic collaboration designed to repair this specific, critical pipeline. By physically linking Ventric Health’s rapid, point-of-care diagnostic technology with Stellus Rx’s EHR-embedded virtual pharmacy care management, the two companies are attempting to automate the transition from early heart failure detection to long-term, optimized medication management.

It is a systems-level solution to a systems-level problem, targeting one of the most persistent clinical bottlenecks in population health: ensuring that a diagnosis actually leads to the complex, multi-drug regimen known as Guideline-Directed Medical Therapy (GDMT).

The Logistics of the Primary Care Bottleneck

To understand the value of this partnership, one must first understand the operational burden of treating heart failure in a primary care setting. Catching the disease early—particularly in high-risk patients already managing hypertension, type 2 diabetes, or chronic kidney disease—is essential. But identifying the problem is only the first step.

The standard-of-care treatment for heart failure involves a four-pillar GDMT approach, comprising ARNIs, beta-blockers, MRAs, and SGLT2 inhibitors. Initiating and managing this regimen is notoriously resource-intensive. Achieving target therapeutic doses requires biweekly dose titrations, routine laboratory monitoring, constant prior authorization management, and intensive patient education.

For a busy primary care provider managing dozens of patients a day, this level of micromanagement is virtually impossible. The logistical friction of polypharmacy leads to a phenomenon known as clinical inertia. Patients with early-stage heart failure often remain un-optimized or under-dosed, leading to preventable disease progression and, ultimately, acute hospitalizations.

"Identifying heart failure early at the point of care is a critical first step, but the true value of diagnosis is only realized when it leads immediately to optimized, guideline-directed treatment," said Thomas Cheek, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Ventric Health. "By collaborating with Stellus Rx, we are giving primary care providers a complete solution, enabling them to detect elevated left ventricular end-diastolic pressure in minutes and quickly transition patients into a proven care management program that drives long-term adherence and protects patient health."

Engineering a Seamless Clinical Handoff

The mechanics of the Ventric Health and Stellus Rx partnership rely on two distinct technological and operational pillars. The first is rapid, objective detection.

Ventric Health utilizes its FDA-cleared Vivio System, a non-invasive device that measures left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (LVEDP) in under five minutes. Cleared by the FDA in early 2024, the physics-based analysis of cardiac pressure and volume waveforms requires no imaging, specialist referrals, or invasive procedures. It simply happens during a standard primary care visit.

The clinical validation for the device is robust. Studies, including data presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in 2023, demonstrated that the Vivio System accurately identifies elevated LVEDP with 88 percent sensitivity and 90 percent specificity when compared to the gold standard of invasive right heart catheterization. A subsequent 2023 study in the European Heart Journal – Digital Health showed a strong correlation with invasive measurements and high diagnostic accuracy.

The system pairs this physiologic data with the digital Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ-12) to provide a comprehensive, actionable diagnosis. But a diagnosis without follow-through is a stranded asset.

This is where Stellus Rx integrates into the workflow. Once elevated LVEDP or presymptomatic Stage B or C heart failure is identified, the primary care team seamlessly routes the patient to Stellus Rx's virtual pharmacy care team.

Crucially, these clinical pharmacists are not external consultants operating in a silo; they are embedded directly into the practice's Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. This interoperability allows for bi-directional communication with primary care providers regarding titration updates, lab results, and patient progress. Acting as an extension of the primary care team, the pharmacists conduct the biweekly patient touchpoints, monitor vital signs, and titrate the GDMT medications to their target doses.

"Managing the polypharmacy and frequent titrations required for heart failure therapy is a substantial operational burden for busy primary care practices," said Tony Makarich, PharmD, Chief Clinical Partner at Stellus Rx. "Our clinical pharmacists act as a seamless extension of the provider, managing the intensive clinical tracking, lab monitoring and barrier resolution required to get patients to goal. By collaborating with Ventric Health to bridge early point-of-care diagnosis with continuous pharmacotherapy, we relieve clinical and operational burden for physicians while ensuring patients receive the full mortality and morbidity benefits of GDMT."

The Value-Based Cardiology Play

Beyond the clinical benefits, this collaboration is fundamentally an economic play designed for the era of value-based care. The traditional fee-for-service model has historically struggled to incentivize the preventative, labor-intensive work required for optimal heart failure management. However, for Medicare Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), Medicare Advantage plans, and risk-bearing health systems, the financial calculus is entirely different.

In value-based arrangements, providers are financially penalized for poor outcomes and excessive downstream costs, such as emergency department visits and hospital readmissions. Heart failure is one of the leading drivers of these acute events. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) actively penalizes hospitals for excessive readmissions related to the condition.

By optimizing GDMT early in the primary care setting, health systems can dramatically alter clinical trajectories. Research indicates that comprehensive four-pillar GDMT can add over eight years free of cardiovascular death or heart failure hospitalization for a 55-year-old patient compared to conventional dual-therapy.

"Value-based care has to be team-based care," added Dr. Patrick Goggin of the Physicians Group of Southeastern Ohio, a clinical group utilizing pharmacist-supported care pathways. "We want our primary care doctors to own the continuum of heart failure management. Working alongside clinical pharmacists allows us to walk side-by-side through the guidelines with the patient. It supports our doctors with a comprehensive set of resources and ensures high-risk patients don't fall through the cracks."

For risk-bearing entities, paying for the upfront infrastructure of point-of-care diagnostics and virtual pharmacy management is vastly cheaper than absorbing the cost of a multi-day cardiac intensive care stay.

Navigating a Crowded Digital Health Landscape

While the logic of the partnership is sound, Ventric Health and Stellus Rx are operating in an increasingly crowded cardiovascular digital health market. Point-of-care diagnostics for heart failure are not entirely new; rapid blood tests for B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) from giants like Abbott and Roche are widely utilized, as are portable handheld echocardiography ultrasound devices from companies like Butterfly Network.

Similarly, the virtual pharmacy and decentralized care management space is flooded with telehealth platforms and disease-specific digital health companies attempting to manage chronic conditions remotely.

However, the differentiation here lies in the specific integration of novel physics-based diagnostics with specialized pharmacotherapy. Handheld ultrasounds require trained operators and interpretative skill, whereas the Vivio System is designed for rapid, automated deployment by medical assistants. And while many virtual pharmacies focus on general adherence, Stellus Rx is specifically tackling the complex, protocol-driven titration required for four-pillar heart failure therapy.

The success of this collaboration will ultimately depend on its ability to prove its economic thesis to payers. While the clinical logic of offloading titration to specialized pharmacists is clear, widespread adoption will require concrete health economic and outcomes research demonstrating that this specific pathway directly reduces total cost of care. If they can definitively prove that this system prevents hospitalizations in a measurable, scalable way, Ventric Health and Stellus Rx may have engineered a blueprint for how we rebuild chronic disease management from the ground up.