McLean, Virginia-based Somatus announced Wednesday that it has raised more than $325 million in oversubscribed Series E financing, at a valuation of $2.5 billion, to grow its value-based kidney care model.
The funding round was led by Wellington Management. RA Capital Management, GIC and Fidelity Management & Research Company were among those providing new investments. Existing investors Anthem, Blue Venture Fund, Deerfield Management Company, Flare Capital Partners, Inova Health System, Longitude Capital and Optum Ventures also contributed. The latest investment brings the total amount raised by Somatus to nearly $500 million.
Somatus partners with payers and health systems to bring in-home care through field nurses who work with primary care doctors and nephrologists to help patients manage medications, and develop personalized care plans. It also pays attention to the social factors that are contributing to a patient’s disease burden to gain a better understanding of what maybe causing disease progression.
Somatus’ clinical team can also help advise what routes to take should a person need dialysis — home dialysis, in-patient dialysis or in-center hemodialysis. It can also advise if the patients need hemodialysis where the blood is pumped out, purified by an external machine and returned to the body; or whether the patient need peritoneal dialysis, where patients receive a cleansing fluid flows through a catheter into part of their abdomen. In this kind of dialysis, the lining of the abdomen serves as a filter and removes waste products from blood. After some time, the fluid with the filtered waste products flows out of the abdomen and is discarded.
Separately, it can work with provider groups to help them through technology tools like nephrology dashboards both at the practice level and at the individual physician level. Providers can view their quality performance as well as keep an eye on current on future costs of delivering care. Somatus can also help practices in contract negotiation with commercial payers.
“Since our inception, Somatus has always been committed to bringing superior evidence-based integrated care to patients with kidney disease which delays disease progression, improves quality of life and lowers total cost of care,” said Dr. Ikenna Okezie, chief executive officer and co-founder of Somatus, in a statement.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The company sees its approach as a break from the industry’s “disproportionate” focus on dialysis, which is used to treat people with kidney failure.
Nationwide, about 37 million people have kidney disease, and as many as 9 in 10 don’t know they have it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those individuals experience a decline in kidney function that is often left unaddressed until it advances to kidney failure.
Dialysis can be life-sustaining for people in kidney failure, removing waste and excess fluid from the blood — critical functions that would otherwise be performed by a healthy kidney. But some in the industry see a need for a drastic shift toward providing more comprehensive care earlier in the disease course. Into that space have stepped companies like Somatus and Strive Health, which provide value-based kidney care.
The company’s care model gained traction as Somatus has grown rapidly over the past year, if its claims are accurate. The company said it launched a kidney-care program with six new health plan partners and established value-based partnerships with multiple provider groups. In 2022, the company said it will serve over 150,000 members in 34 states, across Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and commercial plans.
The latest funding round is expected to fuel additional growth and help Somatus reach more people with its prevention- and management-focused kidney care model.
“This investment puts us in a great position to fund the expansion of our proven care model and continue building a nationwide network of providers and connected patients, who alongside our care teams are working together to improve lives and transform the industry,” Okezie said.
Photo: peterschreiber.media, Getty Images
