Resource KT
Related Articles
Alpha Medical, a telemedicine company focused on women’s health care, closed a $ 24 million funding round on Tuesday. This is another company that is squarely in the crosshairs of a boom in telemedicine investments fueled by the pandemic, although Alpha Medical’s approach has one notable difference: you will not connect to any Zoom calls.
Alpha Medical was founded in 2017. Since then, the company has built a network of 30 primary care providers (industry abbreviated PCP), who treat female patients online, without phone calls or video. For a $ 120 annual fee (not covered by insurance), you can create an account, provide your medical history and patient admission forms, and be assigned a PCP that you communicate with through an online platform. line.
This type of telehealth is sometimes referred to as “store and transfer” – patient health records can be viewed by a physician on an online platform, rather than during a real-time visit.
“We provide you with a primary care physician who speaks fluently [in women’s health]”Lau told TechCrunch.” We’re doing all of this online, asynchronously. “
There are exceptions to this; you may be referred to a lab for testing or another primary care provider if a condition cannot be managed online. “But when you look at the big picture, we think 80% of things can be done online. The remaining 20% must be in person, ”Lau says.
Startups focused on women’s health are starting to gain more attention and investment. Tia, another women’s telehealth company with a physical clinical component, just completed a $ 100 million Series B cycle. Maven Clinic, a business founded by women with a focus on women’s and family health, closed a $ 110 Series D cycle in August and reached unicorn status.
Alpha’s new funding may not be a mega-tower, but it is part of the trend. It brings the total financing of the company to $ 35 million, counting a Series A round that gleaned roughly $ 11 million. It includes the participation of SpringRock Companies, Margo Georgiadis, Outcomes Collective Growth Capital, FMZ Ventures, Samsung Next, Chamaeleon, AV8 Ventures and GSR Ventures.
The previous funding round helped the company accelerate its coverage: the company grew from offering services in about 10 states to 46, including DC, Lau estimates. It has also helped the company increase the number of conditions its vendors can handle, from around three to 60.
This new cycle will allow the company to train and locate providers who can manage even more conditions (the most recent addition was polycystic ovary syndrome). It will also allow the company to move from direct consumer services to B2B services.
“We started talking with medicare plans and employers to close the gap,” Lau says. “We talk a lot with health plans, we have very small contracts from employers who are entering – in fact, that’s how we started to think about it in the first place.”
Lau is one of the two co-founders of Alpha Medical and her expertise lies mainly in the world of data. She is a consultant faculty member at Stanford Engineering and former vice president of data at Timeful, who was acquired by Google in 2015. Alpha medical’s clinical expertise comes from Lau’s Chief Medical Officer, Obstetrician and Gynecologist Mary Jacobson.
Alpha Medical hopes to fill a growing gap in primary care services. And there is evidence that the lack of primary care is an urgent problem. The Health Resources and Services Administration has designated approximately 3,434 medically underserved areas – which means that these regions are experiencing a shortage of primary care providers. A total of 14 million people live in these medically underserved areas.
The existence of these “primary care deserts” has long been a selling point for DTC telehealth companies. Companies like Ro now valued at $ 5 billion boasted of reaching patients in 98 percent of those deserts, by its own calculations.
The Alpha Medical user is also a woman who lives somewhere without a plethora of PCP. But that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Alpha’s demographic target also includes people with high-deductible health plans or those without any insurance, Lau explains.
Even among insured persons in places with primary care available, there is evidence that primary care visits are declining. To 2021 study published in The Annals of Internal Medicine analyzed 142 million primary care visits among people who had insurance between 2008 and 2016. The study found that primary care visits decreased by 24.2 percent, while rates of visits to specialists have remained stable. The decline was most marked among young adults.
The study highlighted a few factors behind the decline. Higher costs (the average cost of disbursements fell from $ 29 to $ 39 during this period), high deductibles, lack of access to care and the fact that people instead go to care clinics emergency or specialists.
Alpha Medical’s services are currently not covered by insurance – but Lau suggests that the price of $ 120 per year for all visits be affordable enough to attract people who already pay for high-deductible health plans or those that are not insured. There is also an à la carte function of the service, where a visit costs $ 15 to $ 30.
The average income for an Alpha medical user, according to Lau, is around $ 40,000 per year. It is somewhat aligned with the median income of women working full time, according to the 2020 census: about $ 47,300 per year.
“The reason we can be so affordable is because it’s asynchronous,” says Lau. “You don’t pay for the time the doctor waits for you to think about your symptoms or your family history. We only notify the clinician when all information is collected in the system, [and] integrated in the DME [electronic medical record]. ”
The idea of asynchronous healthcare may seem a little strange at first glance. One of the biggest benefits of having a primary care physician is having a personal relationship with a health care provider.
But if there was a time to merge telehealth and women’s health care, maybe now is the time.
