Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED) veteran Paul Kusserow is serving as Careforth’s chairman of the board.

Boston-based Careforth is a family caregiver support platform. The company recently announced that it was able to lower adverse health event occurrences and keep seniors out of costlier settings.

Currently, Kusserow also serves as Amedisys’ chairman of the board. He is also the chairman of the board of directors and co-founder of Healthpilot Technologies.

Aveanna Healthcare appoints chief legal officer and secretary

Aveanna Healthcare Holdings (Nasdaq: AVAH) has named Jerry Perchik its chief legal officer and secretary.

“I am pleased to announce the appointment of Jerry to the Chief Legal Officer and Secretary role,” Aveanna CEO Jeff Shaner said in a press statement. “Jerry has a strong background in corporate law and a wealth of healthcare industry and regulatory experience. I have known Jerry for more than a decade and have great trust in his leadership and counsel. It is a pleasure to welcome Jerry to our Aveanna family, and I look forward to partnering with him as we continue to grow and execute our strategic plans.”

Based in Atlanta, Aveanna provides home health, hospice and pediatric care services across 33 states.

Perchik has over 15 years of corporate law experience – in the health care industry – under his belt. Most recently, he served as chief legal officer for MedQuest Associates.

“The Board of Directors is delighted with the appointment of Jerry Perchik to lead our legal affairs team,” Rod Windley, Aveanna’s chairman of the board, said in the statement. “Having worked with Jerry in the past, I have great confidence in his legal expertise, regulatory knowledge, and corporate leadership. We believe Jerry will be a terrific addition to the executive team at Aveanna as we continue our mission to revolutionize the way home care is delivered, one patient at a time.”

New director of home care services joins Androscoggin Home Health Care & Hospice

Androscoggin Home Health Care & Hospice has appointed Mathew Collins as its director of home care services.

The Maine-based Androscoggin is a nonprofit operator that employs 500 workers across all 16 counties in the state.

Before taking time away to complete an MBA and additional certifications, Collins was administrative director of the palliative care service line at Northern Light Health.

New Day Healthcare promotes from within

New Day Healthcare has promoted Debbie Weber to the role of senior executive vice president of hospice operations.

“This elevation of Debbie, who is a tried-and-true executive, positions us to expand our

footprint at an accelerated pace,” New Day CEO G. Scott Herman said in a press release. “Debbie has a track record of growing significant multi-site, multi-state markets, on scale. She will oversee a hospice average daily census in the high hundreds, across four states and that size organization falls into the upper tier of mid-size providers and has us positioned for expansion.”

New Day now has close to 30 locations across Texas, Missouri, Kansas and Illinois. The company offers a variety of home-based care services. New Day serves nearly 110,000 patients annually.

Prior to her promotion, Weber led operations at the New Day company Phoenix Hospice.

Tomorrow Health builds its executive growth leadership team

Tomorrow Health has added three new leaders to its executive team.

Tomorrow Health is a New-York-based startup that enables home-based care through technology and other means. It does so via a network of providers, health systems and health plans.

The company has hired Gabriela Perez as chief growth officer; Craig Thompson as general manager and senior vice president of sales; and Peter Saul as director of provider growth.

“The expansion of our growth team comes as we aim to capitalize on significant demand from enterprise partners to enable high-quality home-based care,” Vijay Kedar, founder and CEO of Tomorrow Health, said in a press statement. “Having Gabriela at the helm of a dynamic, relentless team – alongside Craig and Peter — will allow us to accelerate partnership with health plans, providers, and suppliers to deliver high-quality care to the patients who need it most.”

Perez previously served as chief commercial officer at Big Health. Most recently, Thompson was an advisor at Getlabs, and Saul was national accounts director at Butterfly Network Inc.

The post Former Amedisys CEO Named Chairman Of Careforth Board; Aveanna Announces New Chief Legal Officer And Secretary appeared first on Home Health Care News.

However, doing so will take some innovation and overhaul of a system that is in need of upgrades.

“I think one of the biggest [obstacles] is something that our industry has been facing writ large, which is the transition from analog to digital,” Tomorrow Health CEO Vijay Kedar told Home Health Care News’ sister site HME Business. “A wide breadth of how home-based health care is delivered today is still on the back of incredibly rote, manual, inefficient processes. These are processes and bottlenecks that help no one.”

Tomorrow Health is a New-York-based startup that enables home-based care through technology and other means. It does so via a network of providers, health systems and health plans. Since launching, the company has secured $92.5 million in funding.

In May, Tomorrow Health reworked its business model and closed its medical supply business to focus more on its tech capabilities. That’s been the primary focus for Kedar for 2024.

“It’s been a big focus of ours to really accelerate the digitization of this ecosystem,” Kedar said. “It requires building purpose-built technology for physicians and hospital partners looking to coordinate the transition to home-based care effectively.”

Ineffective or outdated technology drives delays in patients getting care, Kedar said. Too often, health care can be bogged down by analog notetaking and other processes.

Outdated technology, Kedar argues, drives inefficiency and can also affect outcomes in a negative way.

“They drive increasing operating costs for providers and suppliers,” he said. “As a result, they push people to go back to the hospital, which drives up the cost for insurers, risk-bearing entities and everyone involved.”

Naturally, home medical equipment (HME) is poised to play a role in that.

In particular, the transitioning from intense care in the hospital to high-acuity in-home care is a golden opportunity for HME providers.

“We think there’s a huge opportunity for the industry to play a big role in enabling this holistic shift of care to the home,” Kedar said. “Fundamentally, we believe that as we look at the most effective ways to deliver care to patients, there should be more HME in the highest value ways, not less.”

Tomorrow Health is also banking on the fact that home-based care providers are in crunchtime in the rapidly changing value-based care landscape.

Advanced technology and HME providers can help reduce the costs of care by enabling smoother transitions and preventing readmissions.

“It’s going to require partnerships that we facilitate for providers with health plans and risk-bearing organizations to be compensated for the value they drive,” Kedar said. “We want to enable our partners in this industry to really enter a new phase of growth and care delivery that is built on digital enablement and efficiency. We think that’s going to drive the benefit of organizations, providers and patients alike.”

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Vijay Kedar, the co-founder and CEO of Tomorrow Health, has been named a 2023 Future Leader by Home Health Care News. 

To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40-years-old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for seniors, and the committed professionals who ensure their well-being.

Kedar sat down with HHCN to talk about the accelerated adoption of value-based payment models, the three things that will be different about home-based care moving forward and how he got into the space in the first place.

HHCN: What drew you to this industry?

Kedar: I started my health care career at a young age, having grown up in a family of physicians.

After college, I began working as a health care investor around the time of the ACA passage, and soon thereafter, I joined Oscar Health as a general manager, where I launched the company’s Texas division.

Around this time, I was acting as a caregiver to my mother who was diagnosed with stage-three colorectal cancer. Her home-based care needs were extensive, and I witnessed firsthand just how fragmented the ecosystem is. This personal experience propelled me to start Tomorrow Health to enable high quality home-based care for patients like my mother across the country.

What’s your biggest lesson learned since starting to work in home-based care?

My journey in the home-based care industry has taught me that at the heart of health care is the patient and their unique needs.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that innovation in this sector isn’t just about technology, it’s about understanding and empathizing with the patients we serve. Each person’s health journey is deeply personal, and our role is to provide not just medical support, but also compassion and guidance. This industry has reinforced the importance of building strong partnerships with health care providers, caregivers, and patients themselves, ensuring that we create a holistic ecosystem that addresses the physical, emotional, and social aspects of care. Ultimately, my biggest takeaway is that by putting people at the center of our efforts, we can truly transform the way home-based care is delivered and experienced.

If you could change one thing with an eye toward the future of home-based care, what would it be?

The accelerated adoption of value-based payment models is critical for home-based care to transition from reactive treatment models to preventative, patient-centric approaches to care. Embracing value-based care in home-based settings encourages proactive management of chronic conditions, early intervention to prevent hospitalizations, and personalized care plans that consider each patient’s unique circumstances. This approach not only ensures that patients receive the right care at the right time, but also contributes to cost savings for health care systems and payers by reducing unnecessary hospital visits and emergency room admissions.

As the healthcare landscape evolves, the integration of value-based care into home-based services aligns with the broader goal of providing patient-centered, high-quality care. This change has the power to transform how we approach health care delivery, fostering a system that prioritizes wellness, prevention, and individualized support in the comfort of patients’ homes.

What do you foresee as being different about the home-based care space looking ahead?

There are three trends that are important and relevant to understand where the home-based care industry is headed.

The burden of care coordination. The burden of care coordination in the home-based care industry can be substantial due to the complex nature of managing various services, providers, and patient needs. For instance, coordinating medical care, medication management, therapy sessions, and the timely delivery of medical equipment and supplies for a patient recovering from surgery at home requires meticulous planning and communication among multiple stakeholders. This care coordination challenge highlights the importance of streamlined technologies and integrated approaches to ensure efficient and effective care delivery.

Reducing the total cost of care. Putting more emphasis on reducing the total cost of care, rather than solely focusing on direct costs, is going to be crucial in the home-based care industry because it encourages a more comprehensive approach to health care. By considering factors beyond immediate expenses, such as preventing hospital readmissions or avoiding emergency room visits through proactive and personalized care, the overall value of home-based care increases. This approach aligns with the broader goal of improving patient outcomes, enhancing patient experiences, and achieving long-term cost savings for both health care systems and patients.

The vital role of caregivers. The home-based care industry will need to better support both paid and unpaid caregivers as integral members of the care team to ensure comprehensive and sustainable care for patients. Recognizing the crucial role caregivers play in maintaining patients’ well-being, emotional support, obtaining equipment and supplies, and adherence to care plans, reimbursement for their services is essential. By offering financial recognition and training opportunities for caregivers, the industry not only enhances caregiver morale and retention but also contributes to improved patient outcomes and a more holistic approach to care delivery.

In a word, how would you describe the future of home-based care?

Integrated.

What quality must all Future Leaders possess?

Resilience.

To learn more about the Future Leaders program, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.

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Whether its food, fashion or transportation, startups are known for playing the role of disruptor in whatever sector they’re operating in. 

While disruption can lead to innovation and efficiency, it’s also important for startups operating in senior care and home-based care to have a sound business model, healthy funding, strong backers, a clear value-add, advantageous partnerships and proper wherewithal to fully integrate into the space.

Home Health Care News did a deep dive into the standout startups that have cemented themselves in the senior care and home-based care space in recent years.

These companies have the above mentioned characteristics and more, making each one a startup to watch in 2023 and beyond.

Homethrive

At a time when aging in place is the established preference among seniors, Homethrive has cropped up as an aging-in-place enabler.

Homethrive’s staff of social workers provides clients with comprehensive care plans, as well as coaching, personal assistance and concierge services.

“One of the most common things [we do] is we help people understand the differences between ‘skilled’ and ‘non-skilled’ home care, helping them access that,” Homethrive co-founder and co-CEO Dave Jacobs previously told Home Health Care News. “That’s one of the most common things people come to us for, in terms of services. We are very much a partner for home care [agencies] across the country.”

The company was originally launched in 2018. Jacobs and his business partner David Greenberg were inspired by their own challenges with caregiving for their parents.

They brought their extensive health care backgrounds to this venture, having both been executives at the health care products company Medline Industries previously.

“Despite the fact that we were health care executives with a lot of knowledge of the industry, and were fortunate to have close families and the means to support our families, the caregiving journey was incredibly challenging,” Jacobs, previously told HHCN. “It was difficult.”

The Northbrook, Illinois-based company works with home care agencies, long-term care insurance companies and Medicare Advantage plans. Homethrive is also offered as a benefit at companies like Michigan Manufacturers Association, law firm McDermott Will & Emery and health-tech startup Emids.

In 2020, Homethrive raised $18 million, led by venture capital firm 7wireVentures and investment firm Pitango HealthTech.

At the time, Jacobs earmarked the funds to be used for a number of avenues that would push the company forward.

“We’re going to accelerate our penetration into health plans and also accelerate our penetration into the self-insured employer market,” he said. “Additionally, we are investing considerably to build out the technology stack that will power the service we provide to those different markets.”

Two years later, Homethrive raised an additional $20 million, led by Human Capital. Allianz, 7wireVentures and Pitango HealthTech also participated.

This new round of funding would help fuel what the company considers an “aggressive” plan to expand, as well as to accelerate its technology investments, specifically its digital assistant.

MedArrive

Already one of the “most successful” startups in the home-based care arena, MedArrive is certainly one to watch.

The New York-based company coordinates and delivers care in the home. MedArrive works with health systems and health plans to enable home-based care, utilizing non-traditional workers on the way, such as emergency medical services (EMS) professionals.

The company was founded in 2020 — Dan Trigub, the former head of Uber Health, and a former member of Lyft’s health care arm – is its CEO. MedArrive launched with $4.5 million in seed funding. .

“At the end of the day, Uber is a massive technology company with lots and lots of competing priorities,” Trigub told HHCN at the time. “I don’t think anyone would disagree, but it’s really not a health care company as its primary initiative. For me, I really wanted the opportunity to do more in health care.”

He founded the company with Inna Plumb, MedArrive’s COO, with the backing of Redesign Health, Kleiner Perkins and Define Ventures.

“I convinced Redesign, we went through our investment committee process to provide our seed stage funding.” Plumb said during an episode of HHCN+ TALKS last year. “We got to know CEO Dan Trigub. We clicked really well and the rest is history. We raised our seed from Redesign and then went on to raise an extension from Kleiner Perkins and Define Ventures, and then closed our Series A at the end of 2021. That’s our story.”

Plumb’s background includes a career in finance as an investment banker. She also spent time at the meal kit service company Blue Apron (NYSE: APRN).

Since its launch, the company has been able to lock down numerous strategic partnerships with companies such as Health Net, Superior HealthPlan, Brave Health and Spect.

“Partnerships sound really sexy, but at the end of the day, they have to serve a purpose,” Plumb said. “We really let the population and the needs of the population dictate what partnerships we form. When we identify a need within a population, then we go out and find the best possible partner there.”

MedArrive has also prioritized geographic expansion over the years. Currently, the company has nationwide capabilities, but is mostly focused in Florida, Texas, California and North Carolina.

More recently, MedArrive secured $8 million in funding this past April. Overall, the company has raised more than $40 million since it officially launched.

Inbound Health

As an off-shoot of Allina Health, Inbound Health is a hospital-at-home and SNF-at-home enablement platform.

Last year, Inbound Health became a separate entity, and launched with $20 million in funding from Flare Capital Partners.

“We started this internally within Allina Health,” Inbound Health CEO Dave Kerwar previously told HHCN. “As we built out our platform, it became probably one of the largest programs in the country. We designed it in such a way that it could be essentially multi-tenant. We could do this not just for Allina, but other health systems, too.”

As part of its business model, the company works with health plans and health systems that are developing, or have up-and-running, hospital-at-home or SNF-at-home programs. When working with these partners, Inbound Health offers up the care model, clinical leaders, a technology platform that includes a workflow layer, a virtual command center made up of biometric monitoring nurses, triage nurses and virtual hospitalists.

Additionally, Inbound Health’s capabilities also include supply chain, labor and logistics partners, a machine learning analytics platform, an operations unit and a payer-contracting capability for health systems.

“We bring all those capabilities, but most of the health systems and health plans we talk to have some, if not all of those ingredients,” Kerwar said. “Our operating model allows us, over time, to turn on or off those capability sets, so our health systems can look at us as a flexible partner.”

Compared to other startups on this list, Inbound Health is still more local, but its aim is to expand its reach. The company is looking to lock down more partners in other markets. Currently, it counts Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota as one of its health plan partners.

As part of its growth strategy, the company recently expanded to include post-surgical care for general surgery earlier this month. This move creates value for potential hospital partners, according to Kerwar.

“ORs across the country are essentially getting backed up, and their ability to increase the elective surgery count is getting constrained,” he said. “This is because there’s no brick-and-mortar skilled nursing facility bed for the patient to step down to.”

DUOS

DUOS first appeared in the senior care scene in 2020. It had $6 million in seed funding from investors Redesign Health and Forerunner Ventures, as well as a relationship with Magellan Health Inc. (Nasdaq: MGLN).

DUOS is a New York-based company that helps place expert personal assistants — “Duos” — into the homes of older adults. The company engages with the seniors through Medicare Advantage (MA) plans and dual-eligible plans in order to help them age in place.

In addition to working with payer and provider organizations, DUOS is also direct to consumer.

Last year, when the company raised $15 million, led by Imaginary Ventures, it set its sights on growth and technology advancements.

“The funding itself will be used to continue to build out our incredible team from a product engineering and design standpoint,” DUOS CEO Karl Ulfers previously told HHCN. “In terms of what we’re focused on with them, we really want to be a leader in technology for the older adult and caregiving space.”

Ultimately, the company is one to watch because it’s been able to gain a foothold with MA plans who are looking to retain members in a market crowded with available plan options.

“That’s creating churn within their business,” Ulfers said at the Home Care 100 conference in February. “They’re looking for solutions like ours to help them be engaged in those benefits, so they stay on the benefits longer.”

Tomorrow Health

When Tomorrow Health first launched, its business model drew comparison to online retail giant Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN).

Since then, the company announced that it was revamping its business model. In May, Tomorrow Health announced its plans to shut down its medical supply business. It would shift focus to technology and other solutions.

However, the company still plans on working with its home medical equipment (HME) supplier partners.

“HME suppliers are a critical lever to shift care to the home, which is often overlooked by payers,” Tomorrow Health CEO and co-founder Vijay Kedar said in a press statement at the time. “Tomorrow Health’s technology and unique position with payers enables change end to end, supporting everything from prescription to reimbursement while arming suppliers with valuable insights that can drive business growth and ensure positive experiences for every single stakeholder.”

Seeing what Tomorrow Health plans to do next is reason enough for the company to make this list, but it also has an impressive past track record.

Since launching, the New York-based company has secured $92.5 million in funding. Tomorrow Health also works with a big network of providers, as well as 125 health plans and health systems.

The company also has a long list of backers, including Andreessen Horowitz, BOND and Obvious Ventures and more.

Plus, Tomorrow Health rolled out a product that is meant to help providers in the Medicaid and home- and community-based services space in May.

Looking ahead, the company sees this restructuring of its business model as a way to “unlock new opportunities” and lift roadblocks for its home-based care provider network.

The post 5 In-Home Care Startups To Watch In 2023 appeared first on Home Health Care News.

The company announced Thursday that it is closing down its medical supply business to further focus on enabling home-based care through technology and other solutions that benefit its provider and health plan partners.

Still, it will work with other home medical equipment (HME) supplier partners – such as Apria, AdaptHealth, Home Care Delivered, Lincare and Rotech Healthcare – and provide them with “scalable technology.” 

“HME suppliers are a critical lever to shift care to the home, which is often overlooked by payers,” Tomorrow Health CEO and co-founder Vijay Kedar said in a statement.” Tomorrow Health’s technology and unique position with payers enables change end to end, supporting everything from prescription to reimbursement while arming suppliers with valuable insights that can drive business growth and ensure positive experiences for every single stakeholder.”

The New York-based Tomorrow Health has raised $92.5 million in funding since it launched in 2018. It aims to improve how home-based care is ordered, delivered and paid for. It works with a large network of providers, as well as 125 health plans and health systems. It is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, BOND and Obvious Ventures, among others.

After originally making home medical supply a key part of the business, Tomorrow Health leaders believe they have found a better way to influence care moving toward the home. In part, that is through “the transformation of the end-to-end process of how HME is ordered, processed and delivered to patients at scale,” according to the company.

Closing its own first-party HME supply business, Tomorrow Health believes, will “unlock new opportunities” and “remove barriers” for its home-based care provider network.

The news comes on the heels of the company announcing a new product specifically tailored to help providers and health plans operating in Medicaid and home- and community-based services.

“It’s a recognition of the unique complexities that are faced by both Medicaid MCOs as well as care coordinators – and ultimately patients and their caregivers – in navigating home-based care,” Kedar told Home Health Care News last month. “This is something that we have worked to develop over the last year in partnership with a range of stakeholders to ultimately be able to deploy and deliver a product that is really tailor-made and suited to support some of these key stakeholders in the Medicaid space.”

On the HME side, Tomorrow Health still feels like it can make an impact.

It has reduced supplier operating expenses by up to 24%, according to the company. It also allows the supplier to communicate more seamlessly with all stakeholders involved with care, including payers and providers, through its platform.

“Our partnership with Tomorrow Health enables us to automate and dramatically scale Home Care Delivered’s best-in-class customer onboarding process, while simultaneously allowing us to drive the clinical, quality, and financial outcomes that are needed by patients, their healthcare providers, and payers,” Lowell Price, SVP of business development and chief growth officer of Home Care Delivered, said in a statement. “While there are other e-platforms in the market today that we support, none are more strategically aligned to us in both commitment and capability to delivering value-based care in DME than Tomorrow Health.”

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With home- and community-based services (HCBS) booming across the country, the company wants to make the delivery of those services more seamless while reducing costs, improving care and increasing access.

“It’s a recognition of the unique complexities that are faced by both Medicaid MCOs as well as care coordinators – and ultimately patients and their caregivers – in navigating home-based care,” Tomorrow Health CEO and co-founder Vijay Kedar told Home Health Care News. “This is something that we have worked to develop over the last year in partnership with a range of stakeholders to ultimately be able to deploy and deliver a product that is really tailor-made and suited to support some of these key stakeholders in the Medicaid space.”

Backed by BOND, Andreessen Horowitz, Obvious Ventures and others, Tomorrow Health was founded in 2018. The company has raised $92.5 million in funding to date. It partners with health plans, home medical equipment suppliers, providers and health systems to enable care in the home.

Tomorrow Health’s new feature will help Medicaid managed care organizations with care coordination, interoperability and real-time access to the right patient information. It will give MCO care coordinators fuller visibility, “resulting in high-quality patient outcomes,” according to the company.

Among those areas where fuller visibility is paramount: referring provider details, product category estimated delivery dates, confirmed delivery dates and cancellation reasons, among others, according to the company.

“One of the things that we realized is, while the home-based care ecosystem is fragmented and there’s challenge across the board, Medicaid MCOs and members face a differentiated set of complexities that comes from differentiated benefit designs that can vary based on state coverage guidelines,” Kedar said.

State-by-state variance is a major paint point for plans, and a pain point Tomorrow Health has been working on solving since its inception.

“Having really sussed out that initial challenge and pain point with several of our partners about a year ago, we really began breaking ground on this new extension of the platform,” Kedar continued.

Tomorrow Health’s partners are those stakeholders in HCBS delivery. There is a litany of parties involved – whether within one organization or throughout multiple – that are ultimately responsible for a patient receiving, or not receiving, home-based care.

The Medicaid waiting lists for HCBS are long, especially so in certain states. Simplifying the process via this technology, Kedar believes, will allow for more patients to receive HCBS, but also for HCBS beneficiaries to receive their promised care on time and in accordance with what has been prescribed.

“Oftentimes, the array of stakeholders involved in this process is not well coordinated,” Kedar said. “And what we’ve in the Medicaid space is there’s a higher incident rate of patients who have a documented need for home-based care not actually receiving it. When we break down why, it’s often coordination across this breadth of stakeholders, as well as that navigation across the more complex benefits and coverage guidelines.”

Home-based care is also a lever that payers can pull to leverage value-based care across their networks.

But that value-based care is only an idea if home-based care is not actually being delivered in a timely or appropriate fashion. While risk-based and value-based care is more prevalent in the Medicare Advantage (MA) space at this point, Medicaid MCOs are also considering how to become more value-based over time.

The rising demand for home-based care and the payers’ desire to become more value-based are undoubtedly tailwinds for an organization like Tomorrow Health.

“We are seeing significant demand at both the national and regional levels from Medicaid MCOs and diversified health plans toward this effort and toward providing greater coordination for home-based care,” Kedar said. “We expect this to grow – in terms of the members we’re able to afford – between three to 5 times over the next two to three years.”

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Choice Health at Home has named Jeffrey Kreger the company’s CFO. 

The Tyler, Texas-based Choice is home health, hospice and rehabilitation services provider. The company operates in 60 total locations across Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

Prior to joining the company as CFO, Kreger was executive vice president and CFO at VITAS Healthcare. Before that, he was the senior vice president and CFO at Aegis Therapies.

Interim HealthCare Inc. adds two execs to its leadership team

In the midst of growing its franchise network, Interim HealthCare Inc. has also beefed up its leadership team.

Based in Sunrise, Florida, and a part of Caring Brands National, Interim is a franchise that provides home health, hospice, palliative care and other services across over 330 locations in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

Interim has named Steve Schildwachter senior vice president of brand and Scott Williams as vice president of talent.

“I’m excited for this new journey with Interim HealthCare and the opportunity to expand the public’s knowledge around the wide range of essential home healthcare services offered and the different degrees of care from hospital-level to personal aide,” Schildwachter said in a press statement. “Interim has an outstanding network of new and multi-generational home health franchise owners and operators, and I look forward to playing my part in strengthening the business and brand.”

Previously, Schildwachter was COO at Franchise Performance Group and Williams was talent director at Sonas Home Health Care.

“Staffing challenges are affecting the entire home health care industry and meeting demand for home care is directly dependent on the ability to hire qualified professionals so that we can continue providing services to the increasing number of individuals who need it,” Williams said in the statement. “My new role will play an important part in navigating this industry issue and ensuring our patients receive the best care possible.”

Interim opened 15 new offices across the U.S. this year. Two more locations will be opening up before the end of 2022.

Monogram Health names SVP of clinical product and services innovation

Monogram Health announced that Amal Agarwal has joined the company as senior vice president of clinical product and services innovation.

“Agarwal will play a critical role within the Monogram leadership team, serving as our clinical leader for innovation, growth, partnerships and business development initiatives,” the company wrote in a LinkedIn statement. “We’re proud to welcome Amal and look forward to working with him as we transform care for patients with kidney disease and related chronic conditions.”

Monogram Health is a value-based specialty provider of in-home nephrology, primary care and benefit management services for individuals with chronic kidney and end-stage renal disease.

Agarwal has been a board advisor at Monogram Health since 2021.

“I’ve spent years overseeing initiatives that improve clinical outcomes for the senior patient population,” Agarwal told Home Health Care News in an email. “With a primary focus on those with late-stage chronic kidney disease, I have worked to increase awareness, slow disease progression, reduce hospitalization rates and promote in-home treatment. I believe in the high-impact value of a solutions-oriented team approach and the benefits of delivering a robust clinical care model right into the home. That’s why I’m so proud to join Monogram Health now.”

Tomorrow Health builds out its leadership team

Tomorrow Health has appointed Anna Lenhard chief people officer and Ryan Colby as head of go-to-market.

Before joining Tomorrow Health, Lenhard and Colby served in vice president of people roles at Hippo Insurance and Oscar Health, respectively.

“Anna and Ryan bring significant experience in building and scaling world-class teams spanning health care services, technology and operations,” Vijay Kedar, co-founder and CEO of Tomorrow Health, said in a press statement. “Critically, they align closely with our company values to fight like hell for patients and change the system from within. Anna and Ryan join a leadership team that draws from market-moving companies including Amazon, Oscar Health, Flatiron Health, Signify Health and Warby Parker.”

As a company, Tomorrow Health is a data-driven marketplace that partners with payers, referring providers and home-based care suppliers.

Modivcare’s interim CEO permanently steps into the role

Heath Sampson has officially taken the helm at Modivcare Inc. (Nasdaq: MODV). The company named him president and CEO Tuesday. It’s a role he’s held, as interim, since August.

Sampson originally joined Modivcare in 2021 as CFO.

Forcura promotes exec to COO

Forcura has promoted Annie Erstling to the role of COO.

“I am thrilled to promote Annie into the chief operating officer role, which officially acknowledges her as both Forcura’s visionary and my right-hand,” Craig Mandeville, CEO and founder of Forcura, said in a press statement. “It is a testimony to the strength and ability of our senior executives that they can assume additional responsibilities, which result in a more streamlined and effective organization overall.”

Jacksonville, Florida-based Forcura provides post-acute health care organizations with software solutions for managing documentation and care coordination.

Previously, Erstling served as chief strategy officer.

In addition to Erstling’s promotion, Windy Adams — Forcura’s senior vice president of client experience — will now also manage the company’s strategic partnerships. Some of these partnerships include Homecare Homebase, WellSky, Axxess and Maxwell Healthcare Associates.

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The number brings the startup’s total funding to $92.5 million after it secured $25 million in a Series A last year. This round was led by BOND, with additional contributions from Andreessen Horowitz, Obvious Ventures, BoxGroup and Sound Ventures.

The funds will allow Tomorrow Health to expand partnerships with health plans, grow in new markets and continue to invest in technology, according to the company.

“We’ve been growing pretty rapidly, and we’ve seen pretty tremendous demand in the markets we go to,” Shivani Stadvec, the head of marketing for Tomorrow Health, told Home Health Care News. “We’re going to invest quite a bit in technology, and we want to scale that impact to our patients and their families.”

Tomorrow Health partners with home-based care providers to enable them to serve patients. It partners with more than 125 health plans across all 50 states, plus thousands of HME suppliers, providers and health systems.

Tomorrow Health first launched to address the difficulty home-based care agencies were having in obtaining manageable, reliable and consistent medical equipment and supplies for patients.

One way to do that is to connect all stakeholders in the home-based care industry through technology, Stadvec said.

“When we think about technology, we think about connecting all of the stakeholders that are involved,” she said. “Everyone from payers, the insurance companies, the prescribers, physicians, patients, as well as the home-based care suppliers — connecting them with infrastructure and our technology is really rewiring that ecosystem for home-based care,”

The idea is to automate the delivery system of equipment as much as possible and to shift the way patients and other stakeholders get equipment into a more tech-advanced future.

“What we think our tech does is streamline that process,” Stadvec said. “We partner directly with health plans and act as a technology layer on top of their existing networks.”

Expanding on the company’s aggressive growth plans, Stadvec said Tomorrow Health is not looking to serve 100,000 patients or even 1 million patients. The company’s goals are bigger than that, knowing what opportunities lie ahead in the home-based care space.

“We’re really excited to essentially build on this growth,” she said. “Our vision is to serve 100 million patients for home-based care. When we think about the path to getting there, it’s about scaling that impact, driving new partnerships, continuing to [add to] our team and building our technology. Making sure that our infrastructure can actually serve at that scale.”

In a world where society expects the convenience of groceries being delivered to their door and cars picking them up whenever and wherever, the same should be expected for health care, Stadvec said.

“The pace of technology [in this space] hasn’t kept up with modern expectations,” she said. “I think the reason this has worked in other markets is a combination of consumer demand and aligned incentives. We think we’re doing something very different in actually aligning those incentives and really trying to change that infrastructure fundamentally to cover the full scope.”

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In the past five years, in fact, venture capital firms have invested more than $2.5 billion into a seemingly never-ending list of elder care and home health startups, according to a recent Crunchbase report. While the influx of capital is partly due to long-term demographic tailwinds, it’s also because of the highly innovative nature of health care.

“There has been a rise in investor interest because the demographic shift is undeniable,” Primetime Partners Managing Partner Abby Miller Levy told Home Health Care News. “However, I think what has really driven the shift in the past five to seven years has been investors’ interest in health care as a place to innovate.”

Overall, the number of Americans 65 and older will more than double over the next 40 years, reaching 80 million by 2040, according to the Urban Institute.

As a VC firm exclusively focused on aging services and senior care, New York-based Primetime Partners has honed in on this space. The company provides seed and early-stage investments in products, services, technologies and experiences related to aging.

In addition to demographics and innovation, the COVID-19 emergency has accelerated both the number of entrepreneurs entering into the aging services sector and investor interest. In 2021 alone, VC entities have invested more than half a billion dollars into U.S. senior care and home-based care startups, Crunchbase reported.

“One of the things that happened during the pandemic is, you couldn’t pick up a newspaper or watch the news without broad-scale awareness of how seniors were managing amid the pandemic,” Levy said. The news cycle covered everything from the crisis in nursing homes to older adults’ reactions to getting vaccinated. That had a tremendous impact on investor focus, as well as on entrepreneurs’ interest.”

Additionally, entrepreneurs and investors were often personally invested, Levy noted. A significant portion of the people launching or backing senior care startups have older family members that have been affected by the public health emergency, she said.

On top of that, the COVID-19 crisis opened the door wider when it comes to reimbursement and potential revenue streams. That, too, allowed more companies to enter the senior care game.

“I talked to entrepreneurs all the time who said, ‘Unless there’s a payer reimbursing for this, the business model won’t work,’” Levy said.

Several Medicare Advantage plans began paying for remote monitoring technologies and services aimed at mitigating social isolation, for instance. Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) made huge advances toward reimbursing for new models of care, such as hospital-at-thome programs.

Searching for staying power

It’s in this environment that companies such as DUOS and Tomorrow Health launched.

Backed by venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, Tomorrow Health and its digital marketplace deliver medical supplies and equipment directly into its patients’ homes. The company, which began operations in April 2020, already operates in 29 states.

For Tomorrow Health, it was all about addressing a pain point felt by home-based care providers. Tomorrow Health Co-founder and CEO Vijay Kedar noticed that providers often had trouble obtaining manageable, reliable and consistent medical equipment and supplies for patients.

Additionally, the public health emergency increased the demand for medical equipment and supplies, particularly oxygen and respiratory supplies.

“We saw … the existing cracks in the home-based care ecosystem — some of the challenges in the operations and logistics of actually obtaining the medical equipment and supplies that patients needed,” Kedar told HHCN. “As retail locations closed across the country, patients and providers struggled to manage the coordination and processing of the critical equipment and supplies that patients needed at home.”

Essentially, Tomorrow Health is angling to become an Amazon-like service for home-based care providers. Since launching, the company, which announced $25 million in Series A this April, has partnered with more than 125 health plans and hospital systems.

But even with plenty of firepower, Kedar realizes that not every senior care startup makes it.

The ones that do must offer “an incredibly strong” value proposition to the customer, he said.

“That’s what separates an enduring and scalable business from those that have strong products but don’t have the capability for continued growth — a relentless focus on driving value to each of the stakeholders you serve,” Kedar said.

From 2016 through 2018, there were between 62 and 68 deals to fund senior care or home-based care startups in the U.S., according to Crunchbase. That jumped to 83 in 2019, then hit 91 last year.

DUOS is a New York-based company that helps place expert personal assistants — “Duos” — into the homes of older adults. The company officially launched earlier this month, with the announcement of $6 million in seed funding from investors Redesign Health and Forerunner Ventures.

While DUOS has a direct-to-consumer business model, the company has started to strike deals with large B2B customers within the Medicare Advantage and dual-eligibility spaces. It has similarly turned to risk-bearing providers as well.

DUOS’ value-add is that the company addresses the social determinants of health while helping seniors age in place, co-founder and CEO Karl Ulfers told HHCN.

“They really do want to be able to age independently in their home, so the value proposition to an older adult is we fuel their independence,” Ulfers said. “The value proposition from an [informal] caregiver perspective is to directly ease the stress and the burden they encounter.”

For context, roughly 44 million people in the U.S. step in as informal caregivers. These are spouses, partners, friends or family members who assist with activities of daily living (ADLs) and possibly even medical tasks, according to San Francisco-based nonprofit Family Caregiver Alliance.

Even from the early stages of the company, DUOS saw a lot of VC interests, but Ulfers pointed out that interest does not always translate into an investment.

“The last domino to fall that really led us to this funding was our pilot testing, both from an enterprise perspective and also from a direct-to-consumer standpoint,” he said. “We were able to really prove that this model was going to drive high levels of satisfaction, which we measured by [net promoter score].”

On the other hand, one challenge early-stage companies often face is being creative with the resources they have.

“We have a value at Tomorrow Health, which is ‘do more with less,’” Kedar said. “It’s about having the most thoughtful and scalable use of existing resources, and being lean and efficient.”

Ultimately, what separates startups that are able to go the distance and the ones that fizzle is a deep understanding of the senior population.

“Really understanding what they need, and how that need is critical,” Ulfers said.

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The company began operations officially in April of 2020, which was earlier than expected due to the COVID-19 crisis. Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz led the fundraising round, with additional investment from Obvious Ventures and BoxGroup.

By partnering with more than 125 health plans and hospital systems across 29 states, Tomorrow Health is able to streamline operations and delivery in an Amazon-like way. Examples of the medical gear Tomorrow Health can provide include wheelchairs, walkers, ventilators and other often-utilized equipment in home-based care.

One of the reasons that the company launched in the first place was because of testimonials from home health and home care agencies. Agencies frequently had difficulty obtaining manageable, reliable and consistent medical equipment and supplies for patients, Tomorrow Health co-founder and CEO Vijay Kedar noticed.

After the $25 million funding round, the startup will be able to help more agencies around the country.

“Given 2020’s challenges, over the last year, we have become more resolute in believing in the importance of improving home-based health care for all patients and their families,” Kedar told Home Health Care News in an email. “We have seen the difference that having a more efficient, supportive medical equipment supply process can have on patients, and we want to make sure we are doing everything we can to support better patient outcomes.”

This latest round of capital will be used to expand Tomorrow Health’s engineering, operations and business development teams, Kedar said. It will also be used to establish new payer and provider relationships.

The company also announced that Paul Mango, a former deputy chief of staff for policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has joined its advisory board, along with former Humana CMO Roy Beveridge, a staunch supporter of home-based care.

“From a population health standpoint, there are few areas of greater importance than the safe transition of patients to home-based health care,” Beveridge said in a statement. “During a critical and often stressful time for patients and caregivers, the patient-first mentality of the Tomorrow Health platform delivers an unprecedented level of care that supports patients and their families as they navigate their home-based healthcare needs.”

Tomorrow Health has a proprietary data-driven platform that helps match patients with DME suppliers based on their insurance quality in addition to service quality, geography and product specialization.

The investment will also help advance that further, Kedar said.

“Our Series A advances Tomorrow Health by allowing us to make additional investments to our tech infrastructure and team to scale superior home-based health care in a meaningful way,” he said. “Specifically, we will be increasing our solutions for our stakeholders — evolving our tech to support home-based care suppliers looking to grow and operate more efficiently, delivering value to our payer partners and improving the experience for patients.”

Home-based care providers that do wish to use Tomorrow Health’s services can connect with the company through phone, fax or digitally, simply by sharing the relevant information about patients and insurance.

From there, Tomorrow Health does the rest of the work, Kedar said.

Menlo Park, California-based Andreessen Horowitz, its main backer, feels that the home health space is in need of an upgrade — and that Tomorrow Health offers just that.

“The home health space is still living in the Dark Ages and desperately needs an upgrade,” Julie Yoo, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said in a statement. “Tomorrow Health is setting a new, patient-first standard for how we improve the process. Their holistic solution tackles each fragmented step of home healthcare and connects it all in one place.”

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