Avizia, a telehealth business that works with health systems to extend care for a broader portion of their patient populations, such as prisons, schools, and nursing homes, has acquired another telehealth company Carena for an undisclosed amount. The deal will give Avizia physician networks, Avizia CEO Mike Baird said in a phone interview.
“We have never had that before,” Baird said.
Carena, founded in 2010, is a Seattle-based business that employs physicians and nurse practitioners to do virtual consultations in several states. Health systems contract with the business to provide the service. Among its partners are OSF Healthcare, INTEGRIS Health is a not for profit health system of 15 hospitals in Oklahoma. CHI Health is a health system headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska.
Avizia, which started in 2013, has raised $20 million to date. That includes a $17 million Series A round last year which had participation from New York-Presbyterian, marking the company’s first strategic healthcare investor. At the time, Avizia said it would use the funding to double the size of its engineering and software teams to help integrate its telehealth platform with electronic health records and monitor the battery life of remote diagnostic devices.
Baird noted on the call that what sets Avizia apart is that it is not the niche player that most telehealth companies are. Instead of focusing on urgent care or stroke early on, Avizia concentrated on telehealth delivery for hospitals and refining the technology to do that.
“Healthcare systems want stability, long-term partnerships and scale and a lot of healthcare systems find that [most] telehealth startups don’t have the ability to give them that,” said Baird.
Under the terms of the deal that were disclosed in a news release, Carena CEO Ralph Derrickson will become senior vice president of corporate development at Avizia, but Carena will retail corporate headquarters in Seattle to support Avizia’s recruitment and growth strategy.
Photo: Nasco, Getty Images
