Digital main care startup Firefly Well being is beginning to look slightly bit extra like a managed-care group.
After elevating $40 million in new funding, the startup is seeking to construct out a well being plan profit constructed on its community, with the concept of incentivizing members and employers for care navigation decisions with financial savings.
The Watertown, Mass-based startup was based in 2016 as a digital main care firm, the place customers can speak to a chosen care group just about or in individual. Though it began with main care and behavioral well being, it has additionally struck partnerships with exterior suppliers corresponding to Minute Clinic, Joslin Diabetes and Dana-Farber Most cancers Institute.
Although Firefly provided digital visits earlier than the pandemic, they turned a extra frequent care avenue within the final 12 months. Now, different telehealth firms want to steer their providers towards extra of a main care mannequin.
“Digital main care noticed large progress over the past 12 months. However, disconnected, episodic care — digital or not — doesn’t handle the overly burdensome, wildly costly course of sufferers usually face within the healthcare system,” Firefly CEO Fay Rotenberg mentioned in a information launch.
Firefly is presently out there in Massachusetts, Maine, New York, and New Jersey, and plans to increase into a number of new markets this 12 months. That effort can be supported by a $40 million sequence B spherical, led by Andreessen Horowitz and supported by earlier traders F-Prime Capital and Oak HC/FT.
Its well being plan ambitions won’t be so distant from its present mannequin. Somewhat than charging for its providers on a fee-for-service foundation, it prices employers on a per-member, per-month foundation.
In a weblog publish, Andreesen Horowitz Normal Associate Julie Yoo, pointed to the rise of “payviders,” or teams that pay for providers, like an insurer, and administer them, like a healthcare supplier. She is going to be a part of Firefly’s board of administrators.
“Firefly suits squarely into a number of of our funding theses round main care and the trendy well being advantages stack. It’s uncommon to see an organization that delivers on a value-based care mannequin, whereas additionally having a tech platform that connects its care groups, sufferers, and out of doors referral companions in each the web and offline world,” she mentioned in a information launch. “We’re excited to assist Fay and her group as Firefly accelerates the expansion of its care supply and advantages platform to convey reasonably priced, pleasant navigation, main care, behavioral well being, and digital specialty care to the industrial and particular person insurance coverage markets.”
Picture credit score: Venimo, Getty Photographs