Farzad Mostashari’s Aledade Raises $30 Million on the Back of the Switch to Value Based Care

On Aledade’s 1 year anniversary, they just announced that they’ve raised a $30 million Series B round of funding from new investor ARCH Venture Partners and return investor Venrock. That brings their total funding to $35 million. For those not familiar with Aledade, it was Founded by Farzad Mostashari and Mat Kendall soon after Farzad left ONC. They work with independent, primary care physicians who want to participate in ACOs and value based reimbursement programs.

Farzad’s blog post announcing the funding says that by end of the year Aledade will have 100 physician practices managing 75,000 Medicare Patients. With such small numbers, this should illustrate what a huge opportunity value based reimbursement will be for many companies that get it right.

Aledade has an interesting business model. They take about $500/provider as a membership fee and then they split the value based reimbursement commission with the provider. 60% of the reimbursement goes to the provider and 40% goes to Aledade. I’ll be interested to see how well this commission structure holds up. While certainly not an Apple to Apples comparison, doctors are use to paying 5-10% commission to billing companies. Will they be ok with paying 40% to what will feel like a billing company to many? Is this an opportunity for medical billing companies?

I have no doubt that physicians and hospitals are going to need a great mix of technology and healthcare knowledge to be successful in this new world of value based reimbursement. Aledade is on the cutting edge of this trend. Time will tell if they’re too early or right on time for the change.

In a recent article in the Palm Beach Post, they said the following about Aledade:

Thanks to Aledade’s focus on data analytics and physician reminders, Mostashari’s doctors became five times more likely to give recommended preventative care to their older patients, such as annual wellness visits and vaccinations against pneumonia.

This sounds great on face. It’s great that primary care physicians are interested in the wellness of their patients. I also think it’s great that we have a method for incentivizing these kinds of actions. However, my fear with this trend is that we’ll push out guidelines for “wellness care” without knowing if those guidelines actually improve someone’s health.

One lesson Mostashari should have learned well from meaningful use is that if you regulate something too early, you might freeze something in regulation that adds a lot of burden without actually improving healthcare. I’m glad they’re on the cutting edge of this trend. Let’s just be thoughtful that we don’t give our doctors more hoops to jump through that don’t actually provide value. That’s the massive challenge we face with the shift to value based reimbursement and we’re just getting started.

Aledade and company are explorers of a new land. I think we’ve only found the Bahamas. Most of us believe the Americas are still out there to be discovered, but we haven’t found it yet. So, let’s be careful drawing the final maps.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

3 Comments

  • Farzad is the Gavin Belson of Healthcare IT. Yes, from the show Silicon Valley. $30M is an obvious over valuation and will come back to burn him and his company. Its a definite venture to jump out there with that type of Series B valuation. When physicians start dabbling in VC funding on the backs of other physicians, it will always end poorly.

  • meltoots,
    Thanks for the comment. I meant to comment on the valuation. It reminds me of a few EHR vendors that have gotten $60+ million in funding. Those companies have certainly created some value. The real question is whether when they exit or go public, will they be able to create enough value to provide a good return for investors. In Farzad’s case he needs to go after a $350+ million exit. Doable, but it will depend a lot on the timing of the value based legislation. Good thing he has a good connection there.

  • I find this business model of working for a public entity, such as ONC, and then gaining all this inside information as to how the system works and how it can be maneuvered for profit and then resigning and marketing this info to the private sector for big bucks, nauseating.

    “Aledade is on the cutting edge of this trend”, because of this inside information. Ugh!!!

    I would write more but I’m in need of Zofran.

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories