Gentem, a San Francisco tech startup looking to streamline reimbursement for smaller practices, has raised $3.7 million in seed funding. Susa Ventures headed the raise, which also saw support from Village Global, Vulcan Capital, Hustle Fund, 500 Fintech, Social Starts, Great Oaks VC and other unnamed backers.

WHAT THEY DO

In an effort to reduce the stress of payments for those working in small- and medium-sized practices, Gentem’s tech platform not only handles an office’s end-to-end billing and revenue cycle processes, but also pays physician customers up front for their services.

“It’s no news that it’s quite difficult for doctors, physicians, healthcare providers to get paid,” Dr. Fisayo Ositelu, CEO and cofounder of Gentem, told MobiHealthNews. “Instead of them having to wait for insurance to pay them 30, 60, 90 days, we take on the administrative hassle and then close that loop by offering them access to the capital that they need. The reason we’re able to do this is we have access to all of their data and systems. We’re leveraging data science and automation to improve processes.”

Those upfront payments help Gentem stand out from others offering practice payments software offerings, for Ositelu it’s the company’s outsider approach to healthcare data processing that ties together the startup’s full sales pitch.

“I like to say that we’re a fintech company working in the healthcare vertical,” he said. “It’s a lot more than the access to capital — it’s also the approach and the infrastructure in how we’re leveraging fintech to enable us to make these transactions, these payments, and ultimately improve that process.”

WHAT IT’S FOR

Ositelu said that the company wants to build on the early success its seen among beta clients by focusing on three core aspects of its business: operations, business growth and engineering of its tech platform.

“We believe we have a good idea of what our customer profile looks like,” he said. “We just need to execute on those three buckets, and that’s where the money will be going.”

MARKET SNAPSHOT

Revenue cycle management and other billing services are often components of a larger suite of practice management platforms offered by vendors. With that being said, provider organizations large and small are increasingly becoming interested in platforms automating many of these processes so as to reduce burden and complexity, while also helping to scale outreach and cut down on input errors.