Carbon Health acquires RPM vendor Alertive Healthcare to flesh out at-home monitoring

Carbon Health’s merger and acquisition spree rolls on with today’s announcement that the primary are provider has purchased Alertive Healthcare, a remote patient monitoring company.

The move furthers Carbon Health’s recent push into tech-driven, out-of-office disease management, which the company signaled back in June with its acquisition of virtual diabetes management startup Steady Health.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Carbon Health has already seen the power of RPM tools throughout the COVID pandemic in enabling better care for patients remotely with blood pressure cuffs, glucometers and scales.” Myoung Cha, chief strategy officer and president of home-based care at Carbon Health, said in a statement.

“Based on this early success, we believe that delivering great care in the home is critical to providing accessible healthcare for everyone, which is why we are making investments in hardware as a key pillar of our omnichannel care model. Combined with our recent acquisition of Steady Health for diabetes care, Alertive Healthcare now allows us to expand our existing RPM offerings to multiple chronic diseases affecting the heart, brain, lungs and kidney.”

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San Francisco-based Carbon Health runs more than 90 brick-and-mortar primary care clinics across 14 states. The six-year-old company has taken to engaging patients across numerous low-friction channels, such as mobile pop-ups and app-delivered virtual care, to reduce friction and keep patients engaged in their care.

Alertive Healthcare, formerly known as Sentinel, was founded in 2017 and offers its turnkey RPM offering to nearly 40 provider clinics across the country, CEO Nirav Shah, M.D., wrote in a blog post announcement.

The platform uses integrated devices to collect patients’ physiological data and delivers alerts regarding adherence or if the patient’s condition becomes critical. The company said the tools can be used across a range of specialties including primary care, cardiology, neurology and nephrology.

Carbon Health will be integrating Alertive’s service “over the next several months.” This will allow the primary care provider to flesh out its home-based care offerings while allowing its clinicians to gain a better look at patient vitals in real time, the company said.

Shah said the Alertive brand and service will remain intact during the integration. The company will continue providing its service to existing patients and providers “with no changes,” he said, and will benefit from the increased scale Carbon Health will be able to provide.

“As two companies focused on closing access gaps to healthcare, Carbon Health and Alertive Healthcare are a great match,” Shah said in a statement. “By joining the Carbon Health team, we will be able to reach more patients, provide real telemetry and deliver care beyond video in a way that’s truly scalable.”

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Carbon Health, meanwhile, will pick up new provider connections as it seeks to work with Alertive’s existing clientele. It will also be looking to bring Alertive’s RPM platform to other additional health systems, specialists and payers, the company said.  

Carbon Health has made its national ambitions quite clear. Backed by a massive $350 million summer fundraise, the company has said it hopes to become “the largest primary care provider in the U.S.” with a goal line of 1,500 clinics by 2025.

So far, it’s had the growth to back its bark. The company said in July that its patient volume had increased 120% since a prior raise in November 2020. The primary care provider’s acquisitions also haven’t been limited to tech alone—in August, it scooped up two separate clinic chains comprising nine clinics in Tucson, Arizona, and Sacramento, California.