Marley Medical, a virtual primary care clinic focused on people with common chronic diseases, has raised $9 million to launch and reimagine patient-centered care pathways.
The seed funding round was led by Julie Yoo, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and Kristin Baker Spohn, general partner at CRV. Additional angel investors included experienced digital health founders and CEOs.
Digital health veterans and Propeller Health alumni Chris Hogg, David Hubanks and Joe Slavinsky founded Marley Medical in 2021 as a way to establish primary care as the foundation of chronic disease management.
“It’s clear now that a lot of common chronic diseases can and probably should be managed at home,” said Hogg, co-founder and CEO of Marley Medical. “Now we have the tools available, we can measure meaningful clinical endpoints at home with devices and home labs, we can allow people to talk with their care team when it’s convenient for them, and we can ship medications to their homes.”
To make care plans and management easier, Marley Medical members will be able to talk with a multi-disciplinary care team 24/7, schedule face-to-face video visits, change medications and have orders delivered, and use devices and lab kits to track their health progress. This way, everything can be done from the patient’s house, rather than at different locations.
“We make it almost impossibly hard for people to manage chronic diseases,” Hogg said. “We make them miss work or leave home for a half a day to go to the doctor’s office, the pharmacy, the lab. It’s very clear that our health system has not been built with the patient at the center.”
Each Marley Medical member will be assigned a cross functional telehealth care team with nurses and pharmacists, and will have the tools to monitor their own conditions and track vitals such as blood pressure.
Hogg said Marley Medical plans to work with insurers so patients pay the same copays and out-of-pocket expenses they would at a standard brick and mortar facility.
Rather than gravitating to a cash pay environment, Marley Medical services will be considered a standard clinical offering that can be covered as an in-network benefit.
Eventually, the company wants to move to risk-based contracts or capitated agreements to reduce patients’ out-of-pocket costs as much as possible, Hogg said.
“It’s crazy when you consider how much unmet need still exists around management of common chronic diseases, especially in light of new remote monitoring capabilities, emerging care team labor pools, and novel payment schemes anchored in virtual care,” Yoo said in a news release. “We’re excited to be backing Chris and his exceptional team to bring a modern care and business model to patients who are struggling to manage their ongoing health conditions.”
Source link : https://www.modernhealthcare.com/finance/virtual-primary-care-clinic-raises-9m-seed-funding
