BOSTON – June 1, 2015 – Careport Health, the leading innovator in post-acute outcomes management, has closed on a $3.8M financing to accelerate growth. Founded by Dr. Lissy Hu, a Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School alumna, who witnessed first hand the challenges of finding post-hospital care, Careport now supports health systems and hundreds of post-acute providers across the US.
This round is led by Baseline Ventures, with participation from CommonAngels Ventures, Excelerate Health Ventures, Generator Ventures, Launch Capital, 500 Startups and Andy Palmer. Prior investors in the company include Boston Seed, TechStars and a variety of technology leaders.
“Imagine my surprise when I saw that even at the most advanced hospitals, patients relied on paper lists to find post-hospital care.” Hu said. “Frankly I had more information about a hotel a thousand miles away than the nursing home down the street. I saw how much patients were struggling, so I started CarePort to eliminate the information gap and ensure every patient receives the best post-hospital care.”
40% of Medicare patients need post-acute care after being discharged from the hospital. Yet the process of finding an appropriate skilled nursing facility or home health agency can be fraught with challenges for patients. The technology for finding post-hospital care has not evolved much beyond a paper list. Hospitals provide patients in need of rehabilitation services a list with names, phone numbers, and addresses of providers. This opaque process can be equally frustrating for hospital staff. “As a case manager, you know the quality of facilities varies as well as their ability to effectively manage the patient’s recovery needs. But Medicare regulations say that you can’t recommend one place over another, so patients are truly on their own,” said Bonnie Geld, Vice President of the Center for Case Management.
CarePort collects and analyzes data from hundreds of post-acute care organizations to identify providers that match a patient’s unique clinical needs and preferences. Higher quality providers, such as those with low readmission rates, are presented to patients in an easy-to-understand and engaging format. Patients at Massachusetts General Hospital who use CarePort to help find rehab after an elective joint replacement procedure like “being able to take virtual tours of selected places, getting places within a certain distance, and the facility ratings.” Geld believes, “CarePort is the first truly patient-centered discharge planning tool.”
For hospitals, ensuring that patients receive high quality post-acute care has become a high priority issue with the continued transformation to value-based payment systems, including readmission penalties, bundled payment programs, and accountable care organizations. “We get penalized when patients come back to the hospital. It’s bad for us. It’s bad for patients,” explains Joel Vengco, CIO at Baystate Health. “CarePort helps us find high-quality post-acute care for our patients. When a Baystate patient leaves the hospital, they are in good hands.”
Increasingly hospitals are developing collaborative relationships with post-acute providers to ensure their patients receive high value care across the continuum. The Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Connected Care is engaged in quality improvement initiatives with nine skilled nursing facilities. Patients who recover at Connected Care facilities experience a lower likelihood of returning to the hospital for any condition within thirty days. According to Dr. Eiran Gorodeski, the Center’s leader, “Using CarePort, we are giving patients all the information they need to make an informed decision that best suits their needs and preferences.” After implementing CarePort, a greater number of patients are choosing skilled nursing facilities with lower readmission rates.
“CarePort’s solutions facilitate better post-acute decision-making leading to improved healthcare value. The ability to analyze and share relevant healthcare information with patients, their caregivers and collaborating providers in an easy-to-use format is critical to delivering a truly patient-centric care experience during care transitions ” said Joe O’Connor, a CommonAngels Venture Partner, healthcare entrepreneur, and co-founder of healthcare analytics and bundled payments companies.
With the new capital, CarePort will extend its platform capabilities to provide valuable information for providers to collaborate in the management of patients in post-acute settings. Hu explains, “The first step in the journey starts at the hospital, where we help patients and their caregivers find and select the best post-acute provider. Next, we provide the ability to monitor a patient’s recovery and make sure they are receiving the appropriate care.” CarePort’s platform tracks a patient’s recovery course in real time across post-acute settings and relays key information to the patient’s care team. CarePort breaks down information silos and exposes objective outcomes data in a timely fashion so that providers across the care continuum can work together to improve post-acute care in a patient-centered manner. “CarePort is bringing transparency into post-acute care so that we can raise the bar for all providers,” Hu explains. “We want patients to receive the best post-acute care no matter where they go.”
About CarePort Health
CarePort enables providers to optimize post-acute outcomes and costs by guiding patients across the care continuum and tracking their recovery in real-time. Its interactive, patient-centered platform enables patients and families to find high-quality post-acute providers. CarePort continues to follow patients throughout their episode of care by leveraging timely, actionable data from post-acute providers. CarePort has been implemented in leading health systems, physician groups, accountable care organizations, and post-acute providers. To learn more about the company, visit www.careporthealth.com.
