Healthcare-focused Venture capital firm Flare Capital Partners has made an investment in VisitPay, the provider of a technology solution used by major US healthcare systems with total net patient revenue of USD30 billion.
Gary Gottlieb, an Executive Partner at Flare Capital and former CEO at Partners HealthCare, commented: “As the consumer share of payments skyrockets, VisitPay provides a uniquely patient and provider centred solution to engagement and billing.”
With origins in consumer finance, VisitPay equips hospital systems with powerful segmentation and analytics tools while empowering patient consumers with an easy to use solution for managing their healthcare bills. The results are delighted patients, who report rapid and dramatic improvements in satisfaction, and better economics for health systems, who can stem operating margin erosion caused by high levels of bad debt.
“In an era of high deductible plans where 75 per cent of the American population struggles to pay any unexpected expense of more than USD400, and as changing reimbursement rates narrow margins for hospital systems,” says Gary Gottlieb, “VisitPay gives patients more control over the payment experience while reducing the administrative and financial burden of bad debt on the provider, freeing resources for what they do best: clinical excellence.”
Flare Capital’s involvement comes just under a month after VisitPay announced its first professional investors, Norwest Venture Partners and Ascension Ventures. Flare Capital joins the same round of financing, as a new investor partner.
“The quality and experience of the management team at VisitPay impressed us immediately,” says Bill Geary, Cofounder and Partner at Flare Capital and Board Observer at VisitPay. “With their strong backgrounds in consumer finance and engagement, they bring unique and much needed skills to the healthcare industry. We consider VisitPay the only platform for patient financial health and look forward to supporting its growth.”
Kent Ivanoff, VisitPay co-founder and CEO, adds: “In the last four weeks, VisitPay has announced a world class cadre of professional investors in an important validation of our strategy and category. Flare Capital brings deep healthcare investment experience to VisitPay, and we look forward to partnering with them and their outstanding limited partner base in 2018 as we continue on our mission to enable trusted financial relationships between patients, providers and payers nationwide.”
