Nest Health, a startup providing in-home and virtual care to families, picked up over $4 million in an extended seed round to expand to new markets and fuel partnerships with health plans.
SpringTide led the seed round extension with committed support from additional sources including Alumni Ventures, Ochsner Ventures, and other investors.
The New Orleans-based company raised a $15 million seed round in March 2023 led by 8VC and the Blue Venture Fund, a unique collaboration between Blue Cross Blue Shield companies, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and Sandbox Industries. MVP, Health 2047 and Gaingels also supported the seed found last year.
Former Louisiana Secretary of Health Dr. Rebekah Gee, a mother of five and a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist, co-founded Nest Health in 2021 with Rebecca Kavoussi, former president of Landmark Health, to make high-quality primary care more accessible to families in the New Orleans community.
Louisiana ranks nearly last (49th) in the country in child well-being and near the bottom on maternal health and mortality, according to the 2022 Kids Count Data Book, a 50-state compilation of recent household data analyzing how children and families are faring, A March of Dimes report gave the state an 'F' grade for its maternal and infant health outcomes with data showing that 39 out of every 100,000 mothers in Louisiana die during or shortly after childbirth.
"The U.S. is lagging behind other high-income nations when it comes to maternal and child health outcomes, and this is no accident because these things are so connected. The resources that families have to care for themselves and their children are intimately connected to the well-being of both the caregivers and their children and we falter on those," Gee told Fierce Healthcare in an interview last year.
Gee and Kavoussi believed there needed to be a better system to make it easier for families to get the care they need for themselves and heir children.
"We expect parents and kids to go to all these visits, often with a lack of transportation. We don't have paid family leave as a guarantee. We don't have affordable childcare in the U.S, so we create a system that requires them to go places to get care and they simply can't," Gee said last year. "We are not adequately treating the mental and physical health of arguably the most important people who we should be focusing on, the people for whom the health interventions would make the biggest difference over the course of their lives. Nest Health was founded to address all of this."
She added, "It's a very profound shift from our current system because it brings everything to that home and into that family."
Nest Health is a value-based healthcare practice providing parents and their children with primary care services through house calls and virtual care. The company also provides medical, behavioral and social support.
Since launching, Nest Health’s services have become accessible at no additional cost to thousands of families covered by Medicaid in the greater New Orleans area, according to the company.
"Every state in our nation has committed to prioritizing the health of families with children. Nest Health is the first value-based care company to care for families as a unit. Nest families are identified because they have a combination of high or rising risk and lack of attachment to primary care. Since our launch, we've unlocked quality care for thousands of families in the greater New Orleans area. This funding opens the door to expand within Louisiana this year—both with new payers and to new markets—and beyond Louisiana in 2025," Gee told Fierce Healthcare.
The company’s integrated care delivery team consists of doctors, advanced practice providers, family advocates, who are medical assistants, pediatricians, dietitians and mental health specialists. Nest Health provides families with primary care services both at home and online, a 24/7 nurse line for support and advice and evening and weekend availability and check-ups and well visits. Clinicians who come to the home can provide check-ups and well visits, vaccinations. Families can be connected to mental health support, nutrition support, education and coaching services, chronic condition management and specialty care.
"Families eat together, experience addiction together, and experience poverty and poor health together. Treating an individual alone, particularly for high-and-rising-risk caregivers, ignores this reality and ultimately leads to poor health outcomes for the family. Treating the family as a unit, when and where it’s convenient for them, at home, has the power to radically improve access to quality healthcare for families, in Louisiana and beyond," Gee said.
SpringTide partner Brad Otto said Nest Health's approach makes whole-family care "radically accessible."
"This investment signals a much-needed change to support innovations delivering care to our country’s most vulnerable populations. Nest is the first to design home-based care for families and we couldn’t be more excited to be a part of this critical stage of growth for the company and the industry," Otto said.
According to Nest Health executives, the investment marks a significant milestone in Medicaid innovation. With $800 billion of annual spend, Medicaid covers 83 million people and 42% of the country’s births, yet remains an untapped market for privately funded solutions, resulting in only $1.6 billion annually in venture capital investments.
As compared to Medicare Advantage, a program covering 31 million people with half the national spending as Medicaid, Medicare Advantage investments exceed $21.1 billion annually from venture capital, according to an analysis published in Health Affairs.