Heal, a Los Angeles and San Francisco-based service to provide on demand house calls service founded by a nephrologist interested in providing care on doctors’ terms, raised seed funding to support its plan to expand further from San Francisco and down to San Jose.
In an interview with MedCity News, Heal founder Dr Renee Dua said she sees the company filling a niche in the concierge care market, providing care to children and adults on the patients’ home turf for $99 a pop.
Heal raised $5 million from new and old investors including Slow Ventures, March Capital and Pritzker Capital. It also attracted angels, including Qualcomm Executive Chairman Dr. Paul Jacobs, Overbrook Entertainment founder James Lassiter, Clarity Partners founder Stephen Rader, Lionel Richie and others.
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Its fundraise comes on the heels (excuse the pun) of CB Insights analysis of investment in mobile health, which demonstrated the dominance of concierge care and telemedicine startup and growth stage companies.
Including the aforementioned California cities, it strives to have a presence in 15 cities over the next 12 months. Dua said it expects to double its numbers to 20 by December. In addition to smartphone apps, it added an Apple Watch app earlier this year.
It also wants to add to the ancillary services its team of physicians carries out such as ordering labs, picking up medications and other pharmacy supplies, and making referrals.
One of Dua’s most striking comments was about doctors. Her description sounds like a new spin on the traditional private practice model when people had to pay for doctors’ appointments.
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“When I graduated I put up a shingle and now here I am 10 years later running a business. It’s very hard for doctors to run their own business, fighting insurance companies over how they see patients.
“Every single doctor I have vetted loves the flexibility of our business. They’ll never be told they’ve spent too many minutes with a patient and be moved to the next one.”
She sees her business as a way for doctors to practice medicine based on their judgement and not with an insurer looking over their shoulder. And yet, eventually, Heal’s goal is to work with insurers, but on its own terms.
The way Dua views it, insurers will see the benefit of an in person house call service to follow up after patients are discharged from the hospital, which could reduce readmissions and infection transmission from waiting around a hospital ward that they’ll be happy to work with Heal on its terms.
Heal makes use of an electronic health record system that can be shared with the patients’ primary care physician if they choose. Not missing a beat, Rua noted that some patients choose to use its service for primary care. She said about 38 percent of people who use the service use it again.
Asked how many patients it has treated, Dua declines to answer directly, but said it has had 100 percent growth month to month.
Photo: Heal