Aligned Marketplace has raised an additional $20 million in funding through a Series A round led by Venrock as the healthcare marketplace expands access to independent advanced primary care for self-insured employers and Third Party Administrators.
The new capital will support broader employer and TPA adoption of Aligned’s marketplace, which connects employees with independent advanced and direct primary care practices. The company is also expanding beyond primary care by adding value-based specialty care to its network.
Aligned’s model is designed around a simple premise: stronger access to independent primary care can improve health outcomes while reducing downstream healthcare spending. Members receive high-quality care at little or no cost, physicians remain independent, and employers gain a structure intended to reduce medical costs by encouraging earlier and more consistent engagement with primary care.
The company said its approach has begun producing measurable results with large employers. In a program launched January 1, 2025 for a Fortune 500 company with a national footprint, members who engaged with an Aligned physician generated total healthcare costs that were 12% below a risk-matched national benchmark developed by a third-party actuarial firm.
That translated into savings of approximately $96 per member per month during the first year of the program. Members at the same employer who did not engage with an Aligned physician performed in line with the benchmark, providing an additional point of comparison for the results.
The population using Aligned’s physicians was not limited to low-risk employees. Approximately 70% of engaged members were identified as high risk, suggesting that a substantial portion of the savings came from patients who already had significant healthcare needs.
Those members also shifted more of their healthcare activity toward their Aligned primary care physician. Engaged members averaged 4.7 visits with an Aligned doctor while recording approximately 1.6 fewer visits with other providers.
Aligned believes that increased primary care engagement can help identify conditions earlier, improve preventive care, and steer patients toward more appropriate downstream healthcare services before problems develop into more expensive episodes of care.
The company’s early results also showed changes in preventive care utilization. After their first visit with an Aligned physician, engaged members approximately doubled their mammography rate and nearly tripled their colonoscopy rate.
Patient satisfaction has also been strong. Aligned said 94% of participating members reported being able to receive care when they needed it, while members rated their overall experience 9.2 out of 10.
The company is positioning its marketplace as an alternative to the increasing consolidation of physicians within hospital systems and large corporate healthcare organizations. Aligned said more than 80% of physicians now work for hospital systems or large corporate entities, creating incentives that can favor delivering more services within those systems.
Aligned instead curates independent advanced and direct primary care practices on a practice-by-practice basis and ties its own fees to member engagement and measurable outcomes.
The marketplace now includes more than 3,000 in-person clinics across all 50 states. Aligned is designed to sit on top of an employer’s existing insurance carrier or Third Party Administrator, allowing companies to introduce the service without replacing their broader benefits platform.
That structure could make adoption easier for large employers that want to improve primary care access without undertaking a major healthcare benefits transition.
Aligned also sees an opportunity to extend the same philosophy into specialty medicine. When members require care beyond primary care, their physician can direct them toward higher-value specialists, including providers participating in Aligned Marketplace.
By connecting primary care with value-based specialty services, Aligned aims to influence a greater portion of an employee’s healthcare journey rather than focusing solely on the initial physician relationship.
The $20 million Series A will help the company expand that network while bringing the platform to additional employers and TPAs.
Ultimately, Aligned is betting that employers can lower healthcare spending not by restricting access to care, but by making high-quality independent primary care easier to use and aligning financial incentives around keeping members healthier.
KEY QUOTES:
“Employers continue to struggle with rising healthcare costs and poor access to primary care. Fortunately, better primary care lowers healthcare costs by making people healthier. Aligned Marketplace has built a national network of exceptional primary care providers who are super accessible to patients and deliver on the promise of making people healthier, which also lowers cost for employers and patients.”
Bob Kocher, Partner at Venrock
“Our mission is to increase America’s healthy years. Unfortunately, the healthcare system was built to treat illness and generate volume, not to keep people healthy, control costs for the employer who pays the bills, or let independent doctors practice the way they want. We’ve proven that a different model works, one where keeping people healthy actually saves money.”
Patrick Nelli, Founder and CEO of Aligned Marketplace
