COMPANY OVERVIEW

• In 2014, Groups Recover Together was founded in Nashville, TN "to make treatment for opioid addiction respectful, accessible, and affordable."
• The company's goal was to create a treatment option that uses evidence-based practices as well as scaleable options.
• Groups Recover Together has implemented three venture funding rounds in October 2015, April 2017, and October 2017. Unfortunately, because the company is private, they have not released information regarding the amount of funding for each round.
• The company was founded by Jeff De Flavio, Joy Sun, and Silas Howland.
•  Jeff De Flavio has never founded any other companies in the past. He is, however, a board member of Tempest Inc. In addition, he has obtained his Bachelor's of Arts in Philosophy, MD, and MBA from Washington University and Dartmouth respectively.
•  Joy Sun has a background in health and wellness and engagement management at Walmart and McKinsey respectively. In addition, she worked as COO at Give Directly. She received her Bachelor's in Science from Georgetown and her MBA from Stanford.
•  Silas Howland worked in business development for Powerdash before co-founding Groups. He graduated with a diploma from Boston University and an AB in Evolutionary Biology from Harvard.
• The company provides weekly meetings in a group setting as well as phone counseling.
• The company operates in California, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and West Virginia.
• The company does not disclose an accurate business model or their profitability. The company focuses on making medications available to customers by developing a novel delivery method that is attractive to both physicians and patients. There are no reports on the companies profits through annual reports, company profiles, or news publications.

RESEARCH STRATEGY

ASPIRE HEALTH

Brief History

• The company was founded in Nashville Tennessee by Brad Smith.
• He started the company along with Bill Frist as the Board Chairman because they believed they could give people with a serious illness a better care system.
• The desire to start the company began when Brad's grandmother passed away after living in a nursing home and his family facing many obstacles to support her through the hospitalizations.
• Thanks to this experience, he became passionate about healthcare and six years later, in 2013, he founded the company after pitching his business model idea to Senator Frist.

Funding Rounds

• The company has had four funding rounds.
• It is being funded through Merge and Acquisition and has raised $53.5 million in funding rounds.
• The first round was a Series A on August 7th, 2013. This round raised $1 million and the leading and only investor was Nashville Capital Network.
• The second round was a Series B in July 1st, 2014. This round raised $5.5 million and the leading investors were Sandbox Industries and BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, along with other two minor investors.
• The third round was a Series C on June 1st, 2015. This round raised $15 million and the leading investor was Oak HC/FT, while the second investor was Lifeforce Capital.
• The last round was a Series D on October 3rd, 2016 that raised $32 million. The leading investor was Google Ventures and other three minor investors.

Name & Professional Background of Founders

• The two founders of the company were Brad Smith and Bill Frist.
• Brad Smith: Works as the CEO and Founder of Aspire Health. He worked as Chief of Staff in the Tennessee Department of Economic Development. He also worked as an Executive Director of Tennessee SCORE and in McKinsey & Co.
• Additionally, he had experience in non-profit works and in public policy before taking Aspire Health as his first business venture.
• Bill Frist: He is a heart and lung surgeon and former US Majority Leader of the Senate and Senator.
• His professional background includes working in Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Southampton General Hospital, Chief Resident in the Massachusetts General Hospital, Staff Surgeon of Nashville Veterans Administration Hospital, Visiting Professor of the Princeton University and the Vanderbilt University, Board member of AECOM, Select Medical, the Third Nation Bank, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Teladoc, and Nature Conservancy.
• His business ventures include being the founder and Chief position at Nashville Health, Cresse and Co., First Cresse Ventures, Tennessee SCORE, Hope Through Healing Hands, Aspire Health, and the Vanderbilt Multiorgan Transplant Center.

Virtual and/or Physical Clinics

• They provide on-site and home visit assistance.
• Their clinics are physical.

 Key Markets  

• They have locations in 25 states and the District of Columbia.
• The states and cities they are located in are:
• California: Los Angeles, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino and Ventura.
• Texas: Austin, Dallas, El-Paso, Lufkin, Houston, Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio.
• Louisiana: Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Shreveport.
• Mississippi: Olive Branch Southaven.
• Alabama: Birmingham, Gadsden, Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery.
• Georgia: Atlanta.
• Florida: Daytona Beach, Destin, Fort Lauderdale, Ocala, Orlando, Melbourne, Miami, Pensacola, Tampa and West Palm Beach.
• South Carolina: Charleston, Columbia and Greenville Spartanburg.
• Tennessee: Bristol, Chattanooga, Jackson, Johnson City, Kingsport, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville.
• Kansas: Kansas City .
• Missouri: St. Louis.
• Michigan: Detroit, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.
• North Carolina: Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh-Durham and Winston-Salem.
• Virginia: Arlington, Bristol, Norfolk, Richmond and Virginia Beach.
• Ohio: Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.
• Indiana: Evansville, Fort Wayne, Gary, Indianapolis and South Bend.
• Illinois: Chicago.
• Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Erie, Pittsburgh and State College.
• Connecticut: Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven.
• New York: New York City.
• Kentucky: Lexington and Louisville.
• New Jersey: Hackensack, Jersey City, Newark and Trenton.
• West Virginia: Charleston, Huntington, Martinsburg and Morgantown.
• Maryland: Baltimore.
• Delaware: Wilmington.

• They also plan to open new locations in:

• Colorado: Denver.
• Minnesota: Minneapolis.
• California: Newport Beach and Oakland.
• Kansas: Wichita.

Business Model

• According to their CEO, Brad Smith, their approach to attract customers is through engagement to build a warm relationship. Sometimes they engage through their PCP and sometimes they contact through the lists provided by the PCPs and call the potential clients introducing themselves through them. Their business model also includes a network of doctors who refer to other doctors and patients.
• After their customers join, they involve family members through their PCPs or care management centers and offer a real engagement through full care and offer them constant visits from the doctors and practitioners.
• They have field providers, call centers, health plan relationships, and a well-structured system.
• Their value is through figuring an effective payment model and giving the right plans to pay and creating the right support culture to have their customers grow.
• It is structure is a real teamwork structure, delegating responsibilities, and focus on growth.
• They now offer 20 different health plans to give enough options to their clients.
• Their model is called the advanced illness management model and this community work to assist the clients is what gives them and keeps their clients.

 Key Achievements 

• The company was named the fifth fastest-growing private company in Tennessee in 2018.
• Their business model moved to HHS in 2018.
• They were nominated as finalists for Skin and Muscle Awards for Excellence.
• They were named "Best Practice" in "Leveraging Telehealth to Support Aging Americans".

1. Brief History

• Founded in 2015, in San Francisco, the company was born from the co-founders’ desire to create a great impact in both patient outcome and cost of care by helping patients avoid institutional settings and remain at home to treat the diseases.
• CEO Arvind Rajan stated that the usual treatment of patients diagnosed with advanced stage CKD and ESRD fail to take into consideration the patient’s lifestyle and personal values and that poor education often led to a delayed or incomplete plan of action and tremendous cost burdens on the healthcare system and they wanted to remediate that situation.

2. Funding Rounds

•  May 2015 — Seed Round: 129k
•  June 2015 — Convertible Note: 950k
•  Jan 2016 — Seed Round: 2.6 million — led by First Round Capital, BoxGroup, Seven Peaks Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, and NFX Guild.
•  Sep 2018 — Series A: 24m — Oak HC/FT led the round, and additional new investors include Cigna Corporation, LifeForce Capital, iSeed Ventures, Joe Montana's Liquid 2 Ventures, Rock Health co-founder Halle Tecco, and Virta Health co-founder Sami Inkinen. Returning investors include First Round Capital, Box Group, Nexus Ventures, Seven Peaks Ventures, Aberdare Management, and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner

3. Founders

•  Arvind Rajan: Co-founder and CEO of Cricket Health. He graduated from Stanford. Before Cricket Health, he worked at LinkedIn for six years as a Managing Director and VP, New Markets. He also played a role in LinkedIn’s entry in new markets and developed the company’s China strategy. Prior to LinkedIn, he was the CEO of Grassroots Enterprise, a technology and services firm.
•  Vince Kim: He is a Princeton graduate. Vince Kim is a founder and investor in transformational healthcare companies. Vince led investments in medical technology and services companies including Ablation, Frontiers, Elation Health, Jiff, Inc., Nevro, Inc., NXThera, Omada Health, Posit Science, Rock Health, Salmedix and VertFlex. He began his career as a strategy consultant at APM, Inc before becoming a partner at Aberdare Ventures. He then went on to become the co-founder of Cricket Health, where he serves as an Executive and Board member.
•  James Chaukos: Before Cricket Health, he was part of the strategy and analytics team at LinkedIn (Asia-Pacific and US.). Prior to that, he worked at J. P Morgan in investment banking. He graduated from Brown University (BA, Economics) and received an MBA from Wharton.

4. Clinics

• They provide remote, in-person, and at-home care.

5. Key Markets

• Cricket Health is embedded in San Francisco 
• Partnered with the Zuckerberg San Francisco General, UCSF, and UC San Diego.
• They plan to use their Series A funding to expand their clinical footprint.
• In June 2019, Consortium Health Plans announced that BCBS plans will offer Cricket’s model to their national accounts.

6. Business Model

• The company is not yet profitable.
• Cricket currently has two customers, one insurer and one healthcare network.
• With a program aimed at slowing the progression of CKD and supporting end-stage renal disease patients, the company uses data analytics to identify high-risk patients with a mix of remote, in-person, and at-home care services.
• One of the primary goals of the company is patient education.
• Cricket Health delivers patient-centered care through value-based payer arrangements with large employers, in which it takes on financial accountability for patient health outcomes and total renal care costs.
• Insurers pay Cricket Health a set amount for every patient with chronic kidney disease, so the lower the cost of medical care needed, the more money Cricket keeps.

7. Achievements

•  24 million Serious A funding round (first one for the company).
• Named as 2019 'Fierce 15' Company by FierceHealthcare.
• Outgrew its SoMa co-working space and moved into a newly leased office at 251 Kearny St.
•  Consortium Health Plans referred to Cricket Health as the 'preferred partner'.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

•  Oak Street Health was designed for the need of real older patients friendly healthcare system where they are taken care based on their needs and capacity such as transportation to the clinic, value-based service and with the objective of making an impact on this specific population.
• They started through seed and venture funding rounds with the vision of creating a healthcare system that helped elders and provided contracts assistance, software, bonds, buildings, relationships, regulations, and behavior.
• They have had 4 funding rounds raising a total of $105.3 million across all of them.
• The company has 51 centers spread across the U.S.
• According to Griffin Meyers, their business model is based on a system that changes healthcare from an on-demand structure to a proactive one by providing services such as transportation, mental and behavioral health services, making all the clients a part of the community, and others.
• Some of their achievements include receiving the 2018 "Inspirational Award" by Value-Based Health Care Center in Europe, acquiring CityLife Neighborhood Clinics, and partnering with Lyft to provide transportation services to clients.

SUMMARY

• Infusion Express Therapy was founded in Brentwood, Tennessee by Don Peterson and Robert Newth in 2012.
• The company has had only one funding round, which took place on 31 October 2017. 
• It has branches in California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas.
• Infusion Express was recognized as one of the best places to work in the healthcare sector in 2019 by Modern Healthcare.
• The company has a 4.9 rating from 124 customer reviews.

RESEARCH STRATEGY

KEY FINDINGS

• OneOncology was founded by Phil Watts and Robin Shah. The company is aimed at empowering community oncologists to provide better care for cancer patients.

• The company was founded in 2018 and currently employs over 1000 people.

• The company has raised a total of $200 million in one private equity funding round. The investment was made by General Atlantic, a growth equity firm.

• OneOncology generates income by providing services to physicians through community oncology practices. Some of the services they provide are access to new therapies, access to new research in the oncology space, as well as the improvement of practice operations.

• In terms of impact, OneOncology contributes to the treatment of 160,000 cancer patients annually through 250 oncology providers.

RESEARCH STRATEGY