In this episode of Health Tech Deals, Jess’s productivity this weekend was brought to a show-stopping halt thanks to some Microsoft updates. Does adding unnecessary clicks and creating useless toolbars mean that Microsoft is finally ready for healthcare IT? Jess and I talk about this and some more deals in health tech: TigerConnect gets $300 million, Verana Health gets $150 million, Waymark gets $45 million, Formel Skin gets $30 million Euros, and RCM acquires competitor Cloudmed for $4.1 billion.
You may have seen the news that Kaiser Permanente has signed on to be an organizing member of Graphite Health, joining SSM Health, Presbyterian Healthcare Services, and Intermountain Healthcare. Graphite Health, in case you missed its October launch announcement, is “a member-led company intent on transforming digital health care to improve patient outcomes and lower costs,” focusing on health care interoperability.
That’s all very encouraging, but I’m wondering why it isn’t a DAO. In fact, I’m wondering why there aren’t more DAOs in healthcare generally.
Like the new intro? We sure do! In this episode of Health Tech Deals, Jess and I talk about the latest health tech deals and fundraising efforts: DexCare raises $50 million; Avaneer Health raises $50 million; Deepscribe raises $30 million; Little Otters gets $22 million; Ianacare gets $12 million.
What’s this? A new show? Sort of: Health in 2 Point 00 is now called Health Tech Deals! In our first episode, Jess and I reminisce a bit on our previous 247 episodes, and talk about new huge deals in health tech: Transcarent raises $200 million, bringing their total to $298 million and bringing their valuation to over $1 Billion, more than their competitor Accolade; Medically Home raise $110 million, bringing their total to $274 million; Vera Whole Health buys Castlight for $370 million; Stryker buys Vocera for $2.97 billion.
An essay in Aeon had me at the title: The Waste Age. The title was so evocative of the world we live in that I almost didn’t need to read further, but I’m glad I did, and I encourage you to do the same. Because if we don’t learn to deal with waste – and, as the author urges, design for it – our future looks pretty grim.
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!
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.
Happy New Year! We’re starting 2022 full of hope and renewed optimism. Oh, wait; not so much. We’re not only still in a pandemic, the Omicron variant is the most infectious one yet. Daily cases are setting new records. Our hospitals are full again. Our beleaguered healthcare workers – the ones who haven’t already thrown in the towel – are at their breaking points. Two years in, and we still don’t have enough tests. We’re in the greatest public health crisis in a century, yet our legislators are taking power away from public health officials, and their angry constituents are forcing many of those officials to quit. We have effective vaccines, but millions still refuse to take them.
The Simpsons – especially, Homer — has the right word for this: D’oh!
More than one in four senior citizens fall each year, making it the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries in older adults. Anyone with a loved one at high risk of falls can tell you it creates constant worry and curtails many of life’s pleasures. And, if that loved one has fallen and broken a hip, too many of those caregivers can share the oft-told tale of how that break was the beginning of the end.
As our population grows and ages, the costs of this widespread risk multiply. However, recent breakthroughs in the science of brain health demonstrate that we could be taking relatively low-cost, highly scalable, steps to reduce these risks.
Not familiar with Schumpeter’s gale? You may be more familiar with the term “creative destruction.” Schumpeter’s “gale of creative destruction” is the inevitable “process of industrial mutation that continuously revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”
