Telehealth Firm AristaMD Adds $24M to Link Primary Docs With Specialists
CEO of AristaMD, a Telehealth Firm, Catches up with Xconomy San Diego on Recent Company News
“Telemedicine isn’t just another way to connect patients with doctors. AristaMD has carved out a niche in connecting doctors with, well, other doctors.”
eConsults are solving key issues across healthcare organizations by reducing unnecessary referrals, healthcare costs and wait times, in addition to improving outcomes through more timely access to care in the most appropriate settings.
“Many of these issues can be resolved by the primary care provider either calling or emailing the patient [or] writing a prescription,” LeVasseur said. “It’s much more efficient, and it’s saving that patient from unnecessary time off work, unnecessary out-of-pocket spend to go to another visit, etc.”
eConsults Help Manage COVID-19 Impact for Healthcare Organizations
AristaMD, a telehealth firm, raised $18 million in March in a Series B round led by the investment arm of Cigna (NYSE: CI) and the investment fund associated with the MemorialCare Health System. Avalon Ventures, which led the startup’s Series A round in 2016, the University of Colorado’s Healthcare Innovation Fund, and Stanford Health Care also participated.
To complete the series B, AristaMD added $6 million to the financing, closing the round at $24 million following the addition of funds from Ascension Ventures, whose limited partners include a baker’s dozen of US not-for-profit health systems and Boston’s .406 Ventures, which primarily backs enterprise technology and digital health companies.
The telehealth firm has growth plans that include adding to the team, bringing a current 40 employees to an estimated 50 to 60 by the year’s end, an emphasis being on bulking up the organization’s sales force to meet demand. across payor organizations, health systems, and clinics.
Use of eConsults has increased from pre-COVID volumes as it is an effective way of ensuring patients can access the care they need, safely. eConsults have are supporting numerous types of healthcare organizations, especially for chronic care and high-risk patients.
What’s nice about eConsults is that they can wrap around the primary care provider and their interaction with the patient, whether that touch is virtual or whether it’s in person.
This is being used proportionally for a much higher percent of those patient touches than it was pre-COVID … We expect to see that continue even when in-person visits do return to normal.
There really has to be a way for specialty clinics to appropriately inbound referrals that are sitting in the queue. … If we don’t spread those cases out and we don’t match the acuity level and the complexity level of the patient with the training and modality of the provider, we’re never going to work through this backlog and patients are going to be in the hospital because their needs are not being addressed in a timely fashion.
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