Less than 15 months after digital health disruptor Glen Tullman’s Livongo was acquired by Teladoc for $18.5 billion, he raised enough capital to value his new startup Trancarent at $1.62 billion. Yes, so another company is welcome to join the increasingly ununique and rare category of healthcare unicorns.
The company helps self-insured employers use the Transcarent app to give workers 24/7 access to doctors and access to medical services and medications at employer-discounted rates at no cost to employees.
Headquartered in San Francisco on Tuesday transparent Announced its latest funding round: a $200 million Series C round led by Kinnevik and Human Capital, The Ally Bridge Group and top health systems including Northwell Health, Intermountain Healthcare and Rush University Medical Center also contributed. That brings the company’s total raised in just over a year to $298 million.
Others, such as Accolade and Collective Health, are also working with self-insured employers who actively manage health care costs, aiming to make things easier, more affordable, and ultimately improve care for employees with innovative solutions.But these companies are in the world Nursing Navigation, a term Tullman dislikes.
“Health consumers want an experience they can understand and feel comfortable with that provides unbiased information, trusted guidance, easy access to high-value care, and always puts quality first,” he said in a press release announcing the investment Say. “They want better day-to-day care, medication, surgical solutions, and care delivered when and where they need it, preferably at home rather than during the day, and high-quality solutions for complex care like cancer Solutions. They want to have all of that in one place.”
Transcarent will use the funds to invest in research and development initiatives. It also plans to expand its own team and explore other markets, such as Medicare Advantage. According to the company, it currently works with more than 80 self-insured employers to reimagine the healthcare experience for more than 1 million members.
In October, Transcarent announced Partner with Walmart Make care more affordable and accessible to self-insured employees. Under the partnership, employees can access everything from Vision Centers to testing and telehealth offered by Walmart. Rather than billing the company on a per-employee and all-insured basis, Transcarent makes money by taking a cut of the discounts it can offer on health care services and drugs. So, for example, when Walmart uses its purchasing power to lower drug costs, self-insured employers get drugs for less, and Transcarent gets some of the savings.
Investors in this round expressed support for the company’s vision.
“We have been anxiously awaiting reform of broader healthcare industry values for years, arguing that it has never been adequately addressed – largely because no one entity is willing to build a better end-to-end healthcare experience from scratch, ” Christian Scherrer, Kinnevik’s investment manager and co-leader of the Series C round, said in a statement. “We think Transcarent is the first company to tackle the challenge in a new and different way, first and foremost by focusing on the consumer.”
Other heavyweights in healthcare agree.
“Northwell Health has long been committed to doing its part in advancing healthcare reform in our region. That’s why we’re launching Northwell Direct to provide high-quality employer health services associated with new payment models,” New York’s largest health system CEO Michael Dowling said in a press release. “Today, we are proud to partner with and invest in Transcarent as a way to accelerate our efforts at the national level.”
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