Curve Health raises $12M to reduce unnecessary trips to the ER

The company also provides analytics and smart billing for skilled nursing facilities

As we saw during the pandemic, there are many doctor's appointments that, while they had been previously been done in-person, could be done either virtually, or even in the home. That's especially important for seniors, who don't necessarily have the means, or the ability, to make go all the way to the doctor's office.

In fact, millions of people are sent to the emergency department every year for care they could receive in the comfort of their nursing home beds, in their home, or on an ambulance without having to make the trip to the hospital, said Garrett Gleeson, co-founder of Curve Health, a virtual hospital solution that combines telemedicine, health information exchange, and predictive analytics. The company announced a $12 million Series A financing round earlier this week.

Curve Health's platform  allows patients in skilled nursing facilities to connect to remote with remote physicians directly from their rooms through a tablet. The company also works with healthcare systems and provider groups, giving them more visibility into the patient through integrations with electronic health records and diagnostics.

Curve also provides business intelligence analytics to care facilities can improve staffing allocation, and smart billing features to they can get the correct reimbursement for remote provider groups.

"The Curve Health platform is purpose built for complex care, and supports work flows designed by and for providers. Our best-in-class technology enables bedside providers, in nursing homes and other care facilities, to operate as efficiently as possible while having an optimal user experience. Our team works closely with our users to continuously refine our platform for what they want and need," said Gleeson.

On the patient side, the platform has proven to avoid unnecessary transfers in 80% of cases, while deliverying a 5 to 6x return to nursing homes through site of service fees, and improvements in Patient Driven Payment Model reimbursement, as well as increased census, while opening up an entirely new revenue source to provider groups.

"Over time Curve's solution provides a 10 to 12x return due to value based metrics, for example Value Based Purchasing, while enabling remote provider groups, for example ACOs, to significantly reduce the cost of patients they take risk on," said Gleeson.

"Ultimately, with opportunities like Direct Contracting Entities, Curve delivers outsized value that is recognized by all parties mutually in a way that's entirely unique."

Curve Health's new funding round was led by Morningside Ventures with participation from Alumni Ventures and Recover-Care Healthcare, as well as returning investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, IDEO, Inflect Health, Correlation Ventures, Rosecliff Venture Partners, Kapor Capital, WTI, and angel investor Ben Jealous. This brings its total raised to $18 million.

The company plans to use the funding, in part, to build out its product and engineering teams.

"Additionally we're expanding to nursing homes, often known as Skilled Nursing Facilities or SNFs, across the country and we're hiring in business development, customer success, and clinical support roles," said Gleeson.