Aligned Marketplace, an advanced primary care marketplace, announced Thursday that it secured $20 million in Series A funding, which it will use to reach more employer customers.
The New York-based company serves self-funded employers and third-party administrators. It has a marketplace of independent advanced and direct primary care practices. If a member needs more than primary care, physicians can refer them to specialty care also on Aligned Marketplace. The company operates in all 50 states with more than 3,000 clinics within driving distance of over 80% of the U.S. population.
“These doctors have smaller panels, spend more time with their patients, and mostly operate outside of traditional plan networks, so have been out of reach for most employers until now,” said Patrick Nelli, CEO of Aligned Marketplace. “But access alone doesn’t change anything if people don’t use it. Rather than waiting for members to seek us out, we proactively reach out to help members find the right doctor, including identifying people who are rising risk or already high risk and connecting them with care before a manageable problem becomes an expensive one.”
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Venrock led the Series A round. In total, Aligned Marketplace has raised $31 million to date.
“Employers continue to struggle with rising healthcare costs and poor access to primary care. Fortunately, better primary care lowers healthcare costs by making people healthier. Aligned Marketplace has built a national network of exceptional primary care providers who are super accessible to patients and deliver on the promise of making people healthier, which also lowers cost for employers and patients,” said Bob Kocher, partner at Venrock, in a statement.
With the financing, the company will add more clinics to its marketplace, build out its AI tools for scheduling and care navigation and continue expanding into value-based specialty care, according to Nelli.
Aligned Marketplace has achieved cost savings as well. A third-party actuarial analysis found that members of a Fortune 500 company who engaged with Aligned Marketplace had healthcare costs 12% below a risk-matched national benchmark, equating to savings of $96 per member per month. Engaged members also saw increases in preventive screenings, with mammogram rates roughly doubling and colonoscopy rates nearly tripling after their first visit.
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Aligned Marketplace’s announcement comes as more than 80% of physicians work for hospital systems or large corporations “that profit when care happens inside their own facilities,” Nelli said.
“As a result, primary care is hard to find and hard to get an appointment for, and when you do, it’s typically a 10-minute visit that mainly serves as a launch pad to expensive specialty care that may or may not be needed. … Primary care doctors who want to practice medicine a different way have started building their own practices, independent of hospital systems and traditional insurance,” he said.
However, for employers who have workforces across the country, contracts with independent practices can be difficult to implement. That’s what Aligned Marketplace ultimately aims to solve.
“We’ve spent the past few years building direct relationships with these advanced and direct primary care doctors and bringing them to one marketplace, so employers can access these better care models through a single agreement,” Nelli stated.
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