Heal, maker of an app for booking and processing device-driven physician house calls, announced today that it has acquired New York City-based Doctors on Call, a roughly 50-year-old provider of house call services for elderly patients.
The acquisition allows Heal to expand its services — previously limited to the Atlanta, California and Northern Virginia/Washington D.C. areas — into the New York market. Also of note, Doctors on Call founder Dr. Paul R. Rosenstock will take up the role of medical director at Health.
While the core of Heal’s business is its app, which handles both patient-facing bookings and back-end administrative tasks, the Los Angeles company’s approach to in-home care also incorporates remote monitoring technologies. This includes connected devices to help inform visiting clinicians, and a new built-in voice and video telehealth feature that patients may request for certain follow-up appointments.
WHAT’S THE IMPACT
For Heal, the acquisition’s greatest benefit looks to be a rapid entry into a new, dense market.
According to the announcement, Doctors on Call averaged about 42,000 senior house calls within the city during 2018. Heal, meanwhile, claims to have grown by more than 310% in the last 12 months alone (not to mention the addition of its aforementioned telehealth feature). With the addition of New York, the company sees more than 75 million people falling withing range of its services.
“Our acquisition of NYC-based Doctors on Call further extends our leadership in house call-based primary care for people of all ages,” Nick Desai, cofounder and CEO of Heal, said in a statement. “New York City is like a second home for us, and we’re thrilled to serve the Big Apple with the best personalized, innovative healthcare. The Doctors on Call team shares Heal’s values of providing leading-edge healthcare in a location that is convenient for the patient and offers the opportunity to learn about patient needs in order to best serve their medical needs.”
THE LARGER TREND
Heal has been fairly active over the last few months with fundings, deals and an Apple Health Record integration, but it’s also not alone in the realm app-based house call services. Denver, Colorado-based DispatchHealth brought in $33 million in May, and was closely followed by a $10 million Series A round for video conferencing and house call app Remedy.
ON THE RECORD
“Doctors on Call has focused on providing quality, compassionate care to the elderly and infirm and we are honored to become part of the Heal family and move our services to the next level,” Rosenstock said in a statement. “Nick [Desai] and Dr. Renee Dua are working to repair the broken healthcare system and we are looking forward to joining the team and offer our patients the future of care.”
