Atlas Health Raises $40 Million To Connect Patients With Medical Financial Aid

In 2016, Ethan Davidoff was scrolling on Fb and was stopped by a submit from considered one of his spouse’s associates from faculty. She had most cancers and to pay for her chemo therapies, she was launching a GoFundMe marketing campaign. “I believed, ‘is that this actually the social security internet for individuals with most cancers?’” Davidoff remembers. For a lot of, it’s. The crowdfunding web site says a couple of third of the cash raised on the platform is for medical bills — and that was again in 2019 earlier than the pandemic put further pressure on individuals’s funds. On the time, Davidoff thought there have to be a greater method for individuals to cowl these prices. He began researching and found philanthropic medical support packages — 20,000 of them. These funds have a collective $30 billion in potential annual support and Davidoff thought if he might join individuals to those funds it might make an enormous distinction. 

Step one was getting all these sources of support in a single perpetually up-to-date database. As soon as that had largely been constructed, Davidoff was left to determine what sort of enterprise mannequin would greatest carry the knowledge to underlying sufferers in a method they’d truly make the most of. He landed on hospitals. “Hospitals can’t flip you away if you cannot pay,” he tells Forbes. “They are going to be on the hook in the event that they don’t receives a commission. They may battle to maintain the lights on and proceed to serve the neighborhood. Let’s deal with this phase and assist their sufferers.” The built-in software program firm he constructed to do exactly that, Atlas Well being, launched in 2019 and has since taken off, including 40 hospitals to its roster and trying to increase.  

The Seattle-based firm raised a $40 million Collection A spherical to proceed constructing out the software program and increase the gross sales crew, as initially reported in Midas Contact publication. The spherical was led by Felicis Ventures with participation from new traders GreatPoint Ventures and Tribe Capital and present backers International Founders Capital and MBX Capital. The corporate has raised $44.5 million in whole. Sundeep Peechu, a basic associate at Felicis Ventures says the corporate is likely one of the few win-win-win options inside healthcare. “The payers get more money. The sufferers aren’t suspending therapy and the suppliers, who’re working on skinny margins, are capable of cowl extra {dollars},” Peechu says. “It’s a kind of issues that actually is solved by know-how and everyone advantages from it.” 

Davidoff credit the corporate’s success to date in getting healthcare programs to signal on as a consequence of its charge construction. The platform doesn’t cost a subscription charge or one-time price however reasonably expenses a “success charge” collected as sufferers make the most of the startup’s providers. “We share the success,” Davidoff says. “It drives lots of alignment. We’re all on one crew with one aim. It removes a barrier to assist them get began in the event that they don’t need to threat placing any capital up entrance.” When in place, the system helps match sufferers to those monetary support packages earlier than they bear therapy or procedures which might stop sufferers from getting a invoice within the first place. The corporate additionally doesn’t need the credit score as soon as a system is in place and permits their companions to combine and bundle the software program as if it was their very own. 

The rising want to attach hospitals with monetary support for sufferers is large, each Davidoff and Peechu stress. When Davidoff first started increase the product, he hung out in most cancers therapy facilities speaking to workers and observing their shifts. What he noticed was heartbreaking as sufferers wouldn’t present up for his or her therapy as a result of they couldn’t afford it. “It is one factor to see a stat that 25% of Individuals delay medical therapy due to price. It is a completely different feeling if you end up in these therapy facilities and see individuals make these arduous selections,” Davidoff says. “ There’s a actual mission and soul to hitch us on the journey.” Peechu provides that with new progressive medical therapies constantly being developed like CRISPR, out-of-pocket healthcare prices will most probably proceed to rise.

Sooner or later, the corporate hopes to have the ability to increase into different forms of healthcare suppliers together with life science organizations, fusion facilities and clinics that provide specialised care. “In the end, we’re constructing out the infrastructure for the entire market to transact extra effectively across the enrollment of sufferers into these packages,” Davidoff says. “There’s lots of alternative to create worth for the market as a complete by being the infrastructure the allows all the information to circulate seamlessly.”