As physician practices work to modernize their technology and become more consumer-focused, their efforts are often complicated by a sea of vendors selling point solutions.
One startup wants to change that.
“So many of them are using four or five different products in their practice and have no in-house IT — it’s tough to stitch together a solution that way,” said Dan Rodrigues, co-founder and CEO of Tebra, a company that formed last year to address this problem.
Tebra was founded in November as a result of a merger between PatientPop, a provider of healthcare marketing and practice management software, and Kareo, which sells cloud-based clinical and financial software. On Thursday, the company, which has dual headquarters in Newport Beach and Santa Monica, announced it raised more than $72 million in funding and reached a valuation greater than $1 billion. Golub Capital led the investment, which includes both growth equity and debt financing.
By combining the technology of PatientPop and Kareo, Tebra is creating a single platform Rodrigues hopes doctors can rely on to modernize and grow their practices.
“The name Tebra originates from ‘vertebra,’ symbolizing our role as the technology backbone for practice success,” he said. “Just as individual vertebrae come together to support the human body, our complete operating system supports practices, providers and patients alike.”
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’s platform has a suite of practice management solutions that span the following four areas: practice growth, patient experience, billing and care delivery.
Tebra’s practice growth technology offers tools for search engine optimization, the dissemination of digital ads, website design and reputation management. Its patient experience software streamlines patient communication, from scheduling to appointment reminders to payment. The medical billing solution allows practices to enroll, submit, track and reconcile claims in one place.
On the clinical side of things, Tebra’s EHR solution is designed to reduce documentation so clinicians have more time to give to their patients. It features tools for clinical charting, automated patient documentation, e-prescriptions and telehealth appointment hosting.
Tebra sells its software to independent practices of any size. The company’s platform is used by more than 100,000 providers who serve 90 million patients, according to Rodrigues.
While he used to identify NextGen Healthcare, Athenahealth, ZocDoc and Podium as competitors of Kareo or PatientPop, Roridgues said he doesn’t feel the same post-merger. He declared that Tebra is the first company to serve as a “complete operating system for practices” and argued that there is no other company that can solve the problem of fragmented healthcare software vendors as well as his can. Tebra declined to give details about its annual revenue and profitability.
The company, which currently has more than 1,000 employees, will use its new funding to scale its sales and marketing teams. This will help expand Tebra’s market share and strengthen its new branding, according to Rodrigues.
As the company continues to grow, he said he sees several opportunities for functionalities Tebra can add to its platform down the road.
For example, the company is dipping its toe into the world of credit card processing. Since a growing portion of physicians’ income comes from credit cards, Rodrigues said it makes sense to integrate this processing into Tebra’s platform. The company is also eyeing the opportunity to build an online network that connects patients to the right providers for telehealth or in-person care.
Photo: Witthaya Prasongsin, Getty Images
