- Virtual care and communication company Conversa Health announced it has closed $12 million in Series B funding
Virtual care and communication company Conversa Health announced it has closed $12 million in Series B funding. Including this round, the company has raised over $26 million co-led by Builders VC and Northwell Ventures (the corporate venture arm of Northwell Health). P5 Health Ventures, Nassau Street Ventures, and UH Ventures (the venture arm of University Hospitals) also joined the funding round. Northwell Health and University Hospitals are active users of Conversa’s Virtual Care and Communication Platform, which helps patients and care teams across a wide range of use cases, including COVID-19.
Conversa enables health systems to virtually monitor and manage patients more effectively and efficiently than ever before whether it is for chronic care, acute discharge, perioperative, oncology, OBGYN, prevention and wellness, and more. And Conversa’s automated care platform engages patients at high frequency and scale while triaging to higher touch/cost care venues when necessary, optimizing and improving the use of telehealth e-visits, phone calls and in-person consults. The company’s customers have experience significant clinical and operational benefits, some of which include improved patient satisfaction and engagement, lower total cost of care, increased revenue, and enhanced care team coordination and productivity.
The COVID-19 crisis has illustrated the power of Conversa to help hospitals increase care delivery capacity by automating the outreach and monitoring vulnerable patient and employee populations. And Conversa’s suite of COVID-19 Virtual Care Programs is being used by innovative organizations such as UCSF Health, Northwell, UNC Health, Prisma Health and University Hospitals to provide symptom checking and triage, provide check-ins with quarantined patients, deliver lab results, and screen employees, patients and visitors.
These programs have been made available for millions of patients and have been used for hundreds of thousands of employee screens over the last month. And Conversa was first to help America return to work safely with its Employee HealthCheck program for large employers in many sectors of the economy, including retail, manufacturing, universities, and other businesses.
Builders VC partner Mark Goldstein has joined the Conversa board of directors in connection with the funding.
Due to the surge of virtual care, Conversa continues to evolve and grow to meet the needs of providers and health systems, payers and pharmaceutical companies. And Conversa is also announcing that Murray Brozinsky has been appointed CEO. West Shell III (Conversa’s co-founder) will remain actively engaged as Executive Chairman. Brozinsky had joined Conversa in June 2017 as president and chief strategy officer.
Key Quotes:
“Even before COVID-19, we have been expanding our work with Conversa throughout our organization over the last few years as they are a critical component of Northwell Health’s vision for virtual health, further strengthening the provider-patient relationship through personalized, insightful engagement. We have been successfully using Conversa to scale our communications and care for thousands of COVID-19 patients with programs focused on lab results, quarantine, antibody tests and more. Conversa has been an extraordinary partner!”
– Joseph Schulman, Senior Vice President, Population Health, Business Transformation for Northwell Health
“With its game-changing platform that delivers proven results for leading health systems, Conversa’s moment is now. With COVID-19, Conversa is even more mission critical. Hospitals recognize that ongoing remote patient engagement, monitoring and data analysis, via telehealth and integrated smart apps, is essential to reduce costly, in-person interactions and improve outcomes.”
Builders VC partner Mark Goldstein — who is Chairman of UCSF Health Hub
“In addition to being a proven enterprise virtual care platform, Conversa uniquely collects and utilizes valued patient-generated data to make the patient-provider relationship more meaningful than ever before.”
– David Eigen, Managing Director, P5 Health Ventures
“As a patient-centered organization, University Hospitals is intent on meeting our patients where they are. Conversa is a trusted partner in our digital engagement strategy—it enables UH to scale our ability to connect with our patients, using data and automation to address their concerns in real time, and offers our patients the support they need to manage their care at home.”
– Dr. Eric Beck, Chief Operating Officer of University Hospitals Health System
“I have had the privilege of working with Murray as CEO of 5 companies—over the years, his brilliant strategic insights and multifaceted leadership skills have been instrumental to our growth and success. We are excited to appoint Murray as CEO while I transition to Executive Chairman to maximize the effectiveness of our team and accelerate our healthcare system’s transformation to data-driven virtual care. In this Series B round, we are thrilled to continue to attract funding from a syndicate of top healthcare investors and partners who believe in our mission and are committed to contributing the resources to support our growth.”
– West Shell III (Conversa’s co-founder)
“I’ve long said virtual health is inevitable, but it will likely require a catalyst to get it to the tipping point. Unfortunately, COVID-19 is that catalyst. The pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of our health system. Conversa addresses many of these: access, capacity, provider burnout and cost. Our automated conversations empathetically capture patient wisdom and combine it with electronic medical record and sensor data to understand the full picture of a patient’s health at any given moment—we then apply behavioral science to improve their care, experience and health. I’m honored to work with our talented team of caring, data-driven, passionate, proactive problem solvers—and our partners on the front lines—to help create the ‘should be’ healthcare system of the future.”
– Murray Brozinsky
