RetraceHealth, a Minnesota-based direct-to-consumer home and video doctor visit provider, has raised $6.5 million according to an SEC filing. This follows on a $1 million round from January. Lemhi Ventures, a new investor, led the round and Lemhi Managing Director Jodi Hubler will join RetraceHealth's board of directors. Previous RetraceHealth investors include Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, HealthEast Care System, and McKesson Ventures.
The company provides patients with primary care via video visits as well as in-person, house calls. Patients are able to schedule a visit on the company's website and then chat with the clinician from a phone, tablet, or computer. For any kind of health concern that needs to be addressed in-person, like lab tests, the nurse can visit the patient’s home.
RetraceHealth offers pay-as-you-go pricing and membership pricing. If users want to pay as they go, video visits cost $60, home visits cost $150, home visits plus labs cost $190 (the a follow-up visit is free), in-home X-rays cost $160, and ultrasounds cost $160. An individual membership costs $50 per month and a family membership costs $100 per month. RetraceHealth is also in-network with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. One of the company’s other investors, HealthEast Care System, is also a customer.
One thing that differentiates RetraceHealth from other services is that RetraceHealth only hires nurse practitioners to treat patients. In about 20 states, including Minnesota where RetraceHealth is based, nurse practitioners are able to practice independently in primary care.
Currently, the service is offered in almost the entire state of Minnesota, but the company has plans to expand out of the state — but only to states that offer nurse practitioners the same level of autonomy. Some of these include Connecticut, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Rhode Island.
“Given the company that I am working on, I believe in the model of using nurse practitioners,” CEO Thompson Aderinkomi told MobiHealthNews in January. “They oftentimes have better outcomes than medical doctors. They get sued less often. One interesting fact is that the malpractice insurance costs less [for an NP] than for a medical doctor even in the same specialty. That says something, that means something. The way they are trained is different and most nurse practitioners practice as a nurse, an RN, before becoming a nurse practitioner. So they enter it in a different way."
Minneapolis-based Lemhi Ventures has invested in a number of health tech and health IT companies, including two that have since been acquired, OneHealth and Shareable Ink, as well as PokitDok.
