Healthcare
See the 14-slide presentation StationMD used to raise $3.2 million for its approach to providing care online to people with disabilities
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- StationMD, a startup providing online care to people with disabilities, has raised $3.2 million.
- Founded in 2017, the company aims to help complex patients avoid the emergency department.
- See the presentation StationMD used to win over investors.
While seeing a doctor online is a convenience for many people, it’s a lifeline for Missouri resident Amanda Barnes-Adams and her son Cooper.
Cooper, 11, is severely autistic and nonverbal. He deals with anxiety in unfamiliar places, and trips to the busy doctor’s office stress him out. Getting him there is a major challenge for Barnes-Adams, who has trouble managing him through his anxiety attacks.
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Fortunately, Cooper has access to specialized telehealth services through Missouri’s Medicaid program. The services, provided by a startup called StationMD, have allowed Cooper to get treatment from home for simple illnesses, like an ear infection, and access to medical supplies like diapers that require a prescription, rather than risk a traumatic trip to the doctor.
“When we know that our child has a minor illness, is sick, it is a lifeline for us to be able to call,” Barnes-Adams said.
Started by emergency-medicine doctors in 2017, StationMD provides care online to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, such as autism, cerebral palsy, and Down syndrome.
The company partners with states, health insurers, and provider agencies to care for people across 12 states. On Thursday, StationMD said it raised $3.2 million in funding from Martin Ventures and Adam Boehler, former director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, to help it expand and reach more people.
The concept was born out of the founders’ experience seeing people with disabilities frequent the emergency room, where they’d receive unnecessary and poor care from doctors who don’t know how to care for them, said Dr. Maulik Trivedi, co-founder and chief strategy officer of StationMD.
StationMD’s physicians are trained to understand the complex medical and non-medical needs of patients with disabilities, and the challenges their families face in supporting them, Trivedi said.
“Our goal is to elevate the quality of care that this population deserves and hasn’t really been receiving,” he said.
Like other telehealth upstarts, StationMD has grown rapidly as the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted more doctors and Americans to embrace virtual care. The company expects to bring in between $14 million and $15 million in revenue this year, up from $900,000 in 2019, and it’s profitable, Trivedi said.
Boehler and Devin Carty, CEO Of Martin Ventures, said they were attracted to the company’s potential to drive down costs by shifting the care of disabled people to the home. About 16 million people in the US have intellectual or developmental disabilities, according to one estimate.
Boehler, who founded and led home-health company Landmark, said StationMD could be a game-changer for patients and their families.
“This enables people to live at home, either on their own or with family members, and not necessarily have to move to group homes,” he said. “And if they are in a group home, then let’s make sure they don’t have to go to the hospital unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Here’s the presentation that StationMD used to raise $3.2 million from investors. The company edited the presentation to remove some sensitive information.
StationMD provides specialized virtual care to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The Maplewood, New Jersey-based startup partners with states, health insurers and provider agencies to serve about 32,000 patients across 12 states and DC.
The company was founded by a group of emergency-medicine physicians.
People with intellectual or developmental disabilities tend to have multiple health conditions and lack effective primary care. Instead, they end up in the emergency department or hospital for minor illnesses or medication refills, driving up healthcare costs, the company said.
Trivedi said these patients receive poor care in the ED, because most doctors aren’t trained to understand their complex needs. The experience can be traumatic for patients: “Moving them into an emergency room can be extremely disruptive to their lives,” said Martin Ventures CEO Carty.
StationMD provides patients with round-the-clock access to doctors that are trained by the company to care for their specific needs.
The company said it provided 25,000 virtual visits in 2021 and kept patients from having to travel to the emergency department or urgent care 93% of the time.
There’s big potential for saving costs by reducing visits to the emergency room, StationMD said.
Few telehealth companies focus on the highest-cost, most complex patients.
StationMD estimated that the market potential for its services exceeds $4 billion.
StationMD is situated in a different corner of the market from other telehealth companies. It works with patients who live on their own, but most of its patients are in group homes.
The company said its services benefit patients, doctors, group homes, and payers, like Medicaid.
StationMD partnered with a New York-based health insurer to offer its services to 1,100 patients. The company said it helped the insurer save more than $2.1 million over 10 months in avoided emergency department and transportation costs.
The company makes money by charging its partners a per-member per-month fee. It aims to push deeper into arrangements in which it shares in the cost-savings it produces, it said.