In his two years at Uber Health, Dan Trigub worked to expand access to medical transportation, and, now, he's focused on building a unique approach to home health.
Trigub and co-founder Inna Plumb have launched MedArrive as a new care management platform that enables healthcare providers and payers to extend services into the home.
The startup bridges the virtual care gap by integrating physician-led telemedicine with hands-on care from a network of trusted EMS professionals, improving patient outcomes while empowering an underutilized segment of healthcare workers, according to the company.
Backed by Redesign Health, MedArrive banked a $4.5 million seed round co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Define Ventures. In connection with the investment, Annie Case, principal at Kleiner Perkins, and Lynne Chou O'Keefe, founder and managing partner at Define Ventures, will both join the MedArrive board of directors.
Based in New York City, Redesign Health is a venture studio and holding company incubating tech-enabled healthcare businesses.
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The injection of capital will enable MedArrive to continue building its platform, grow its team of industry experts and drive the expansion of key healthcare provider partnerships across the country. With an initial focus on the Florida market, the team expects to expand quickly and effectively over the coming months.
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed additional stress on the health system, with patients avoiding clinics, delaying preventive and critical care and facing financial strain.
"By working alongside communities of EMS professionals, providers, and payors to bring high-quality care into the home at a fraction of the cost of alternatives, MedArrive’s integrated solution is putting patients back at the center of care," said Trigub, CEO of MedArrive.
“Now more than ever, as we continue battling a global pandemic, patients deserve healthcare that is accessible, affordable and safe,” he said.
Clinical care is moving more into the home, and telemedicine is growing with the tailwinds of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it can’t solve every health problem, Trigub told Fierce Healthcare.
"Our mission statement is to improve people’s lives to bring more humanity to healthcare, the physical touch and the contact, and telemedicine strips out the human side of care. By building this platform and infrastructure, we're connecting three stakeholders, patients, health plans and health systems and we're leveraging the most under-utilized workforce in healthcare, EMTs and paramedics," he said.
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MedArrive taps into a capable workforce of EMS professionals so they can leverage the full scope of their training, earn supplemental income and diversify their day-to-day responsibilities. At the same time, patients using MedArrive are able to access trusted medical expertise from the safety of their homes and within their existing health systems, ultimately resulting in better patient outcomes, a better-utilized healthcare workforce and significant cost savings for patients and providers alike, according to the company.
Trigub, who left Lyft to become the head of Uber Health, announced in September that he was leaving the ride-share giant.
"Uber, at the end of the day, is not a healthcare-first organization. It's a massive company with amazing scale and reach. But there are lots of competing priorities. I wanted to give my full attention to a pure healthcare business, and it's a tremendous opportunity outside of a large tech environment that can have a lot of red tape and internal politics," he said.
While telehealth has helped to increase access to care, many care needs require in-person visits and diagnostics and often benefit from deeper insight into a patient’s experience at home, said Pat Songer, chief operating officer of Cascade Medical Hospital, executive director of the National EMS Management Association and adviser to MedArrive.
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“What MedArrive is doing is enabling this [EMS] workforce to utilize the full scope of their training and provide care in the home that cannot be done as effectively in a clinic setting, such as medication reconciliation, discharge instruction adherence, fall risk assessment, and collection of key SDoH and environmental data. This translates to better care experiences for patients and lower costs," Songer said.
MedArrive partners can tap into a network of more than 20,000 trusted emergency medical technicians and paramedics, with equal representation in rural and urban markets. This will be particularly critical for the company's partners looking to distribute flu vaccines and, when available, a COVID-19 vaccine without overwhelming health systems, according to MedArrive executives.
Additional services include chronic condition management, transitional care, readmission prevention, urgent care and palliative care.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to providing clinical care in patients' homes, according to Plumb, who has experience in private equity, finance and analytics.
"Care is moving into the home, but how can we do it cost-effectively? By leveraging EMS and existing players in the market to deliver care in a cost-effective way, we can be active in both rural or urban environments," she said.
By leveraging virtual care and in-person care, MedArrive enables providers and payers to see what's going on in a patient's home to address social determinants of health and quality of life issues, Trigub said.
That taps into Trigub's experience at Uber Health, where he led the company to form partnerships with Medicare Advantage plans to open up ride-sharing options. Uber Health also has put a focus on Medicaid as a key market to focus on at-risk populations.
"What we can truly do here at MedArrive is have an outsized impact to help democratize healthcare," he said.