One Medical Group snags $40M to streamline waiting room

One Medical Group allows patients to take care of everything online

I love my son’s pediatrician—the man has practiced for over 20 years, has won numerous awards, and he has a Hello Kitty sticker on his stethoscope which never fails to keep my kid entranced long enough to take his vitals.

And then he goes and pulls out a paper chart, and it’s like pulling out a fossilized piece of Jesus’s cross.

Doctors can be good or bad, but they make life a hell of a lot easier when they’re tech savvy. One group of doctors—called One Medical Group—has created a platform to streamline appointment setting, same-day appointments, and online follow-ups. The startup announced Thursday that it has raised $40 million in a round led by Redmile Group, with help from “current institutional investors.” The new capital brings One Medical’s total raised to $117 million altogether, including a $30 million round in 2013 from Benchmark, Maverick Capital, Google Ventures, Duff Ackerman and Goodrich, and Oak Investment Partners.

Founded in 2007 by a group of doctors who were sick of the reptilian system they were having to work with, One Medical Group allows patients to patients to schedule appointments via their phone, see their medical records and lab results online, request same-day appointments, follow-up with their doctors online, and request prescription refills.

The model isn’t totally new—Kaiser Permanente has a pretty extensive online and mobile platform. But One Medical Group might be one of the first—if not THE first—platform to take the mobile and online “waiting room” technology to private practices across the country. Interestingly, this means that like the Kaiser network, patients can visit any doctor using One Medical Group because they all have access to the patient’s records.

Currently, it’s available in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Patients are charged $149 a year to use the service.

"We started One Medical to build a better primary care delivery model – one that uses technology to deliver higher-quality care and service more affordably," said One Medical Group founder and CEO Tom Lee MD, in a statement. "With our recent expansion into the enterprise, employers are discovering that our model can help them lower their overall health care costs while giving their employees turnkey access to quality primary care that they love."

Over the last year, the company has added seven new offices and grew its member base by over 50%. Some 40 companies have enrolled in One Medical Group’s employee health benefit program, including Fitbit, Doximity, Adobe, Quantcast, NBCUniversal, Uber, On Deck Capital, Percolate, and more.