OFFOR Health, a company that offers on-site clinical services for both dental and medical practices, has recently landed $9 million in a Series A funding round. AXA Venture Partners led the round Series A, with MBX Capital, SpringRock Ventures, and LOUD Capital also investing in the startup. To date, the Columbus, Ohio-based company has raised $15 million.
The Series A funding will go towards developing and scaling OFFOR’s last-mile care delivery model, which will entail on-site medical delivery in a variety of areas. OFFOR already serves practices in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois.
In particular, the company, which also targets pediatrics practices, provides anesthesiologists, registered nurses, medications, and equipment needed for procedures so medical practices can do procedures in-house. It aims to reduce procedure wait times and increase access to care by providing such services outside a hospital operation room. Separately, OFFOR is the parent company of SmileMD, which provides in-office anesthesia services to dental practices.
“There are groups looking to solve this access challenge, but they are geographically limited or grown as a small business of a few entrepreneurial providers [versus us] being able to invest in logistics, technology, and clinical quality to bring the opportunity to a much wider set of providers that would love to deliver their craft but with everything taken care of like walking into any other OR,” said Saket Agrawal, CEO of OFFOR Health, in an email forwarded by a representative. “Other competitors are focused on specific areas of care. OFFOR is focused on bringing amazing providers to the table by delivering the best experience for them and matching with patients facing access challenges.”
OFFOR aims to use the funding to reaching patients in rural areas. Further, it sees its services as a way to get patients the treatments they need faster, especially with hospitals still recovering from only performing essential procedures during the pandemic and the resulting backlog of treatment requests.
Prior to OFFOR, wait times could exceeding six months for needed procedures – such as oral surgery – and could be further complicated when coupled with long drive times to hospitals for those in more rural areas, according to Agrawal.
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 problem that OFFOR Health is immediately solving is one that is high-cost, and high-impact,” said Manish Agarwal, general partner at AXA Venture Partners, in a news release. “They are doing great work serving a very in-need population of pediatric Medicaid patients. This vision, combined with the clinical knowledge of the founding team, tells us that they are on track to not just make a splash in the changing healthcare landscape, but truly make a difference in patients’ lives.”
Agrawal went on to add:
“During the pandemic we saw a drastic spike in pediatric operation wait times,” said Agrawal in the press release. “Tech enabled delivery of care is an area we are seeing innovation in across the healthcare industry, but we believe that we are doing work that can truly have an impact. By saving time, money, and resources for patients, providers, and payers, we are seizing the chance to improve the quality of healthcare for people nationwide.”
To date, OFFOR claims to have saved 45,000 months of wait time. The company also touts it saved patients a cumulative 600,000 miles in travel.
There is a cost component as well. By moving procedures outside the OR, the company expects to save money for the entire syste,. OFFOR hopes these benefits will extend to its last-mile care delivery model, too, according to the release.
OFFOR sees itself as a sort of Uber for medical and dental practices: a practice can order the services it needs to be delivered to their practice , mirroring how Uber sends a car to someone who needs transportation.
“We work with payers and communities to find patients that have challenges accessing healthcare which then drive up the cost of care with over-utilization of emergency rooms, ORs, prescriptions, and other venues. We then deliver the opportunity to providers to fill that gap with an “uber-ized” model for clinical care for providers but with a strong emphasis on clinical quality and oversight,” said Agrawal. “This allows providers to own their schedule and practice their craft without the overhead and bureaucracy of various systems or needing to be a business owner worried about HR, claims, etc.”
Photo credit: Chinnapong, Getty Images
