Telemedicine ‘24 Report, Healthie @ HLTH & TruePill gets sold

What’s in this month’s newsletter?

• Fueling Founders 🚀: Keep an eye on how political winds are shifting this election cycle. We give you some key news items below. 
• Healthie Highlights ⭐:  We’re heading to Vegas for HLTH! 
• Infrastructure Corner 💻: We loved a recent State of Telemedicine Report that analyzed the LinkedIn activity of 115,077 clinicians. 
• Healthie partners in the news 👏: Congrats to Candid Health, a Harbor Partner, on their Series B fundraise! 
• Unwinding the Bubble 🫧: Truepill, a pharmacy/telemedicine darling, gets acquired in a deal that might not have netted a return for the Founders/Team. 

Fueling Founders 🚀

It’s presidential election season and as usual, healthcare is front and center in the national conversation. There’s two items we want to bring to your attention this month:

First - The Biden Administration has finalized new provisions in the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act which “will force health insurance plans to collect and report more robust data on how they limit and deny mental health claims. If disparities exist between mental and medical care, insurers will need to lay out how they are attempting to address these gaps.”

Why this matters:

• The fight for mental health parity has been waged in earnest since 2008 when this Act was passed and has continued to this day. The parity has progressed, but inch-by-inch
• More and more of healthcare is becoming adjacent to mental health either in the direct care pathways or care plans for their patients. This recent legislation, some of the provisions which go into effect next year, is another step towards more holistic patient care
• Given parity, access, cost and other issues … many believe that we’re still in the beginning stages of the behavioral health boom. Legislation like this could be the key to unlocking the next stage of growth. 

Second - We liked some of the trackers coming out that compare the two presidential candidates on healthcare issues, specifically this one from the Kaiser Family Foundation (along with their tracking poll).

Why this matters:

• Aside from the obvious influence on national policy and strategic healthcare direction … Founders and leaders get asked all the time whether the election will impact their business. This can impact your fundraising story, a new line of business that’s launching, or an existing revenue stream.
• It’s important to take a quick look at the candidate’s key stances, and see if their proposals could be a big boom or bust to your business. Now, it’s become increasingly harder to pass national laws through our Congress, so the chances of major legislative overhauls are always low …
• … but if the candidate can make the change via the tweak to an existing law or a new Executive Order then they are more likely to get that through. It’s worth spending a few minutes to see if any key parts of your business/story are at risk.

Healthie Highlights ⭐

The Healthie Team will be at HLTH in Las Vegas next month! Meet with us IRL at the conference, and event, or elsewhere – find more information here. 

Also, we’re hosting an invite-only event on Sunday night with our partners Adonis, Candid, Penciled, Sully, and Zoom. Join us for a night of darts, gourmet bites, drinks, and next-level networking at the Venetian’s latest venue, the Flight Club Social Darts Bar. Registration is required and space is limited – get on the list.

Other Healthie highlights for you:

• We’re proud to share our latest customer case study with Brightline – a behavioral health care delivery company providing virtual-first mental health services to children, teens, and families in all 50 states.
• Feature Release – Our new billing automation makes it easy to automatically charge or invoice patients based on your cancellation policy. No more manual follow-ups or financial losses 💸💸 Read more. 

Infrastructure Corner 💻

Single Aim recently released an excellent report titled State of Telemedicine 2024. It’s fairly unique as it analyzed the LinkedIn work history of “115,077 clinicians who have ever worked at a telemedicine company”.

Why this matters:

• It concretizes through data what we all thought: Telemedicine today is dominated by mental health, and the growth by employment and company type is also primarily in mental health. So we can think of the telemedicine industry as two categories: “Mental Health and everything else”
• There’s significant demand for remote work but not enough supply of those jobs. Leaders who can create these types of flexible roles will be poised to capture talent
• We’re still at 3-4% of all clinical jobs are in telemedicine, so “an additional inflection is needed”. If you’re a telemedicine leader, how does your growth story align with these trends? 

Healthie Partners in the news 👏

An RCM partner in the Healthie Harbor, Candid Health, recently announced its Series B fundraise. We’re proud to partner with Candid and it’s great to see them continue to grow! 

For context on Healthie <> Candid’s partnership: Healthie’s integration with Candid Health enables businesses streamline claims submissions. The integration results in modern healthcare providers being compensated efficiently and empowers them to scale their products and organizations more seamlessly. 

Unwinding the Bubble 🫧

In this new section of the newsletter, we look at business moves made during the 2020-2022 Healthcare investment bubble, and how those are faring today

Truepill was at one point a darling of the healthtech world: Truepill had raised over $370 million in VC funding, including at a $1.6 billion valuation in 2021, from firms like Optum, Optum Ventures, Oak HC/FT, and Initialized Capital. Recently, it was announced that Truepill was acquired for $525M.

Now you might think that $525M - $370M = $155M that the Founders/Team get to pocket. But it’s not so simple. With capital stacks, liquidation preferences and more venture capital terms, in an exit scenario like that it’s possible that the Founders/Team didn’t walk away with much (speculation here with speculated deal terms here; again it’s speculation/hearsay).

Why this matters:

• In essence, Truepill represents the epitome of the Covid-era enthusiasm for telehealth and the promise it had to overhaul American medicine. While Truepill started as a pharmacy fulfillment company, it grew to encompass telemedicine and remote diagnostics as two other legs of the company. They had ambitions to grow past D2C and into B2B2C through Payers/Providers. Truepill took a very “silicon valley” approach to building and hired experienced business leaders and engineers from top companies. 
• We compare ourselves to these unicorns all the time and wonder what they are doing that we aren’t. While there are certainly positive lessons to learn from Truepill, remember that massive/fast growth isn’t always what healthcare needs. Slow and steady can win the race.
• The only valuation number that matters is at exit (and the associated terms!). In years past we all got caught up in the hype of massive valuations … but it’s important to note how those numbers can change massively by the end of a company’s lifecycle. 

That's it for this month!

Team @ Healthie