Votive Health — a technology startup that facilitates payer-provider integration — formally announced its launch and first funding round on Wednesday. The company raked in $2.5 million in a round led by Flare Capital Partners, with Chrysalis Ventures and OCA Ventures as co-investors.
San Luis Obispo, California-based Votive Health is a technology-enabled network manager that offers market assessments for health plans and providers. The company specializes in gauging an organization’s ability to succeed under value-based payment arrangements.
Most of the providers Votive Health works with are home health and hospice agencies that have their sights set on offering care under a value-based arrangement with a health plan.
Strategically, Votive Health has positioned itself as a conduit between cost and care, Torrie Fields, founder and CEO of Votive Health, told Home Health Care News.
“We have a mission of ending suffering by improving complex care at home,” she said. “We assess [providers’] ability to perform under value-based arrangements, and then we negotiate and price those arrangements. We act on behalf of our providers to ensure that the contracts they have with an insurance company are effective for both payers and providers alike.”
Fields noted that after Votive Health has negotiated a contract on behalf of a provider, the company supports the ongoing management of that contract.
That means making sure providers are meeting their performance guarantees and the value payers want to see from complex care at home. The company also supports referrals to ensure that providers are receiving a reliable number of patients and payment for their services.
The new funds will fuel the growth of Votive Health’s team and aid in the company’s efforts to build out its platform, according to Fields.
“We are working to build our infrastructure and our team,” she said. “We’re bringing on a great team who have a lot of industry expertise, specifically in Medicare Advantage, serious illness and value-based arrangements. We are building the tools and services that will allow us to support our payers and providers.”
Although Votive Health has been around since February 2020, the company tied its official launch with its first funding round. Given its services, Fields believes that the company launched at an opportune time.
“We have been building, designing and growing Votive Health from concept to company during a time when our services became needed,” she said. “What we have seen over time has been what we used to call ‘the silver tsunami’ — where you have a rising number of people who are aging and who have complex health conditions. This means you have more people who have to manage the diagnosis of a serious illness and the decisions about treatment that need to be made.”
For Votive Health, the COVID-19 emergency has underscored the importance of ensuring that this population has access to safer care, which is typically delivered in the home setting.
“People with serious illness and who are nearing the end of life, especially in these times, need reliable access to complex care at home,” Fields said. “There is a growing awareness from consumers that they can have a choice in their health care. We are raising awareness as a country about the real breakdown in infrastructure that we would need to address in order to support people living longer and happier lives in their homes.”
Looking ahead, the company is seeking to grow its nationwide network of high-quality palliative care providers.
“We want to deliver network adequacy to Medicare Advantage plans, managed Medicaid and private insurers,” Fields said. “We are looking for development partners and want to support health plans in managing and coordinating these types of services.”
Companies featured in this article:
