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Transcarent’s Valuation Soars Past $1B. Hear Why Glen Tullman Says It’s More Than Worth It.

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Transcarent raises a whopping $200 million Series C funding round that values the year-ish old business at over $1.6 billion – valuing the up-start higher than quasi-competitor, Accolade, which is sitting on the NASDAQ with a $1.3 billion dollar market cap. Executive Chairman & CEO Glen Tullman shares some very revealing details about the round, why he’s deliberately added leading hospital systems onto his cap table, and what he’s got to say to the doubters who might question whether not Transcarent is a billion-dollar business just yet. (Spoiler alert: Glen says Transcarent didn’t even take the highest valuation they were offered…)

The investors are interesting for all those who want to read into the strategic messaging there: late-stage Livongo investor Kinnevik led the round alongside Human Capital and Ally Bridge Group, existing investors came back in, and, probably most surprising, are hospital systems Northwell Health, Intermountain Healthcare, and Rush University Medical Center. Apparently, other hospitals wanted in too but missed the chance thanks to a tight timeline. Glen explains his rush and why the capital is essential to further build out Transcarent’s offering in light of the market opportunity he’s seeing among employers.

This is a payment model innovation play, folks, that is basically arming those large, self-insured employers with the bargaining power and healthcare ingenuity of Glen Tullman, and what he says is the best executive leadership team he’s ever assembled. The pieces are certainly starting to come together, and it looks a lot like a new age payer to me. Transcarent’s basically got the prescription drug pricing power of a PBM in its relationship with Walmart… a national network of top-end health systems who are either partners or have skin in the game thanks to this funding round… the centers of excellence business it bought with BridgeHealth… AND some ‘coming soon’ care-at-home, cancer care, and behavioral health offerings Glen teases us about here. All that is offered to employers at full risk to Transcarent, which takes no copays or coinsurance from members, doesn’t charge any per-employee-per-month fees to their employers, and is keeping providers happy with payment up-front. If it’s not a payer because it’s better than our current definition of a payer, that might be the only reason why!

Still, Glen tells us that partnerships with some of the market’s “most innovative” payers are coming soon, along with new customer announcements. And, what will he spend this $200 million on to further build-out Transcarent’s offering? I’m not afraid to ask if there’s a chronic condition management co he’s got his eye on acquiring!

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 246| Healthcare.com, Found, Well, Gamer Health, Belong Health

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Let’s break Jess’s New Year’s Resolutions a tiny bit and look at some 2021 healthcare deal holdovers. Healthcare.com raises $180 million, bringing their total to $212 million; Found raises $100 million, bringing their total to 132 million; Well raises $70 million, bringing their total to 135 million, and Garner Health raises $45 million, bringing their total to $70 million.

-Matthew Holt

THCB Gang Episode 76, Dec 23 1pm PT – 4pm ET

This is the last THCB Gang of what has been a long, grueling, but enthralling year. And every week (well almost every week) we have had a group from across the health care luminescence to discuss it.

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang at 1pm PT 4pm ET Thursday for an hour of topical and sometime combative conversation on what’s happening in health care and beyond will be THCB regular writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard);  delivery & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis); privacy expert and entrepreneur Deven McGraw (@HealthPrivacy); WTF Health host & Health IT girl Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa); and three occasional gang members making very welcome appearances–venture investor & soccer mogul Marcus Whitney (@marcuswhitney); surgeon & startup guy Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal); and health economist Jane Sarasohn-Kahn (@healthythinker).

And towards the end of the show we should have our now traditional (or 2nd time) visit from as many other gang members who can make it!

The video will be below but if you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

Health in 2 Point00, Episode 245| Bright Health, Innovaccer, Cadence, Ophelia, and Apti Health

Today in Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I talk about the plethora of notable deals in the Healthcare Space. Bright Health gets $750 million with notable investment from Cigna; Innovaccer gets $150 million, bringing their total up to $375 million; Cadence gets $100 million, bringing their total up to $141 million; Ophelia raises $50 million, bringing their total up to $64 million; and Apti Health raises $50 million, bringing their total up to $65 million.

-Matthew Holt

BREAKING: Innovaccer CEO on Healthcare Cloud Startup’s $150M Raise & $3.2B Valuation Announced Today

BY JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Health tech infrastructure startup, Innovaccer, announced its $150M Series E and newly assigned $3.2B valuation today, and I’ve got CEO Abhinav Shashank with the essential intelligence on how this company is pursuing health IT’s holy grail: the single patient health record.

This is a story of cloud technology’s uptake in healthcare, which has lagged behind other sectors like banking and retail in terms of industry-wide adoption. Abhinav tells us that the “economic incentives” are finally aligned for cloud to really take-off in healthcare, as the technology will be critical to any models where care is longitudinal instead of transactional and a singular view of a patient’s clinical data, labs, scans, and claims will be essential to healthcare organizations taking on more risk.

So what, exactly, does Innovaccer do? What’s the work, and how do they get paid? Who has access to the data they’re landing in the “Innovaccer Health Cloud”? Will patients one-day be able to access this single record themselves? And, what stops Epic or Cerner from just doing this and owning the space outright? No detail left unexplored in this one and – for the benefit of those of us who are not very plugged into the IT underpinnings of the EHR – Abhinav breaks it all down for us in a way that even us non-techie health tech market watchers can understand!

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 244 | Transcarent, Suki, Robin, Cerebral, Nomi, and Apti Health

How much longer do we have to wait for Glen Tullman to be on the NASDAQ with Transcarent? In this episode of Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I discuss several new deals in the healthcare space. Suki raises $55 million, bringing their total up to 95 million; Robin raises $50 million , bringing their total up to $65 million; Cerebral raises $300 million, bringing their total up to $420 million; Nomi raises $110 million ; and Apti Health raises $50 million, bringing their total up to $65 million.

–Matthew Holt

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 243|Quartet, Ribbon, Lyn Health, Medallion & Safely You

I cough my way through this episode of Health in 2 Point 00 in his original interview sweater. There’s $60m for Quartet (mental health), Ribbon Health gets $43.5m to fix provider lists, Lyn Health reinvents the medical group with $10m (sort of), Medallion gets $30m to fix cross-state line provider credentialing & Safely You gets $30m to use AI to prevent falls in nursing homes. -Matthew Holt

WTF Health: Early-Stage Med Device Startup Acorai is Turning Smart Phones into Heart Failure Monitoring Devices

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Acorai is an early-stage medical device startup working with Bayer to improve the way we manage the world’s 65 million patients living with heart failure by using their own smart phones. CEO Filip Peters shows the Acorai device, which is basically an extended smart phone case packed with four different kinds of sensor technologies that work together to measure the pressure inside a patient’s heart, by simply holding their phone against their chest. Of course, the real magic is the algorithm that turns these readings into early detection of a potential incident. How does this stack up against the status-quo way we’re currently caring for these types of patients? Filip says that, right now, the alternative for such monitoring is an IMPLANTED sensor, which many patients aren’t even able to get. As a result, most of the early warning signs of impending heart failure are missed; Acorai’s tech has the potential to be truly revolutionary as it’s able to detect the signs that lead to heart failure hospitalizations up to 30 days in advance.

Acorai has been selected as one of four “Growth Track” companies in Bayer G4A’s Digital Health Partnerships Program, and Filip talks to us about the potential Bayer sees in the daily data stream of information Acorai’s device makes available to cardiologists. A fascinating look at the future of cardiac care!

Inside FarmboxRx’s Groundbreaking Work in SNAP/EBT Benefits to “Eradicate Food Deserts Overnight”

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

HUGE news on the “food-as-medicine” front for Medicaid/Medicare Advantage beneficiaries! Now, they can get fresh fruits and veggies delivered directly to their doorsteps and they can pay for them using their SNAP/EBT benefits. FarmboxRx is behind this first-of-its-kind partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and here to talk through EXACTLY why this is groundbreaking (and what precedent it could set for the food-as-medicine movement in terms of payor support) is founder and CEO, Ashley Tyrner.

As Ashley explains it, FarmboxRx’s produce deliveries have been previously covered by Medicare Advantage and Medicaid, but only under the limited ‘over-the-counter’ healthy foods benefits those plans provide. In some states, this nets to just $20-$25 per month for a family of one. With the addition of SNAP/EBT funding, the budget available for spending on these farm-to-table deliveries expands to $164-$230 per month. A potential game-changer.

We unpack Farmbox further and get into how they’re differentiated from Amazon and Walmart, which also take food stamps online, but don’t deliver produce nationally like Farmbox does. This is a move Ashley describes as having the ability to “eradicate food deserts overnight.” There’s so much more about food insecurity, the way FarmboxRx is working with health plans to use food as member engagement and trust-building tool, and, of course, the backstory behind the business which is basically BOOTSTRAPPED (there’s some venture debt) and raising a Series A.

WTF Health: Accolade Navigates Itself into New Territory: CEO on Personalized Healthcare & Tech Infrastructure

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Healthcare navigator Accolade (NASDAQ:ACCD) is on the move. Not only are they now cruising in care delivery territory with two new primary care/mental healthcare offerings that let them personally guide their 9M members further into the healthcare system, BUT they’re also starting to talk more and more about their tech infrastructure and the “operating system” they’ve built to power that healthcare GPS with shared data and access.

CEO Rajeev Singh stops by to walk us through the strategy behind both sides of this (especially interesting when you consider his tech startup background in the context of those “operating system” statements) and why Accolade launched its own new category (personalized healthcare) as a framework for talking about the new course they’re charting.

We get into the September debut of Accolade Care, which bundles primary care and mental health in a per-employee-per-month model, and Accolade One, which wraps the full Accolade ecosystem around the Care product in a value-based model. At-risk models seem to be rising in popularity these days, and I get Rajeev’s perspective on why Accolade chose to go-to-market with one of those…and one that falls into the usual PEPM structure.

More interesting to me, however, is this whole “operating system” thing and how it’s playing out behind-the-scenes to strengthen integration across the businesses Accolade has acquired (Health Reveal being the most recent) and point solutions its partnering with like Virta, Headspace Health, Sword Health, RxSavings Solutions, and Carrot Fertility. The “purpose-built” architecture Rajeev describes sounds like it’s not only giving Accolade what it needs to better manage population health outcomes within its own offerings but that it, in and of itself, could be a new offering for partners who don’t want to build a tech platform themselves.

New directions explored…next moves discussed…AND Raj’s six-year CEO Anniversary celebrated! Watch now.