Telehealth platform eVisit announced Tuesday it closed a $45 million Series B funding round.

The round was led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s growth equity business, with participation from investors including Texas Health Resources and Health Catalyst cofounders Tom Burton and Steve Barlow.

WHAT IT DOES

eVisit provides a virtual care platform that includes scheduling, intake, a waiting room, discharge and analytics. 

“Providers need an end-to-end technology solution that helps them work more efficiently, seeing and treating more patients – helping them practice at the top of their license. This is good for everybody involved,” cofounder and CEO Bret Larsen said in an email to MobiHealthNews.

“When physicians and other healthcare providers can focus on the most challenging clinical situations, not only are they working efficiently, they’re keeping their most difficult skills sharp. This benefits patients more than anyone. Being able to help providers practice at the top of their license by putting the right technology in their hands is crucial to alleviating provider burnout.”

WHAT IT’S FOR

Larsen said the company plans to use the Series B capital to invest in the virtual platform’s technology. It wishes to hire new employees across teams, including sales, marketing, product development and engineering. 

He predicted the company would grow its associate base by nearly 100 people by the end of the year.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

eVisit’s Series B builds on a $14 million Series A round announced in October 2020. Other companies in the telehealth and virtual care space include Zoom, Doximity, TytoCare, Verizon and Walmart Health.  

The telehealth landscape has changed dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a FAIR Health report last year, the telehealth share of medical claim lines increased 3,552% between August 2019 and August 2020. 

However, FAIR’s Monthly Telehealth Tracker has noted a decline in telehealth utilization recently. Its use fell 10% nationally between May and June 2021. Policymakers are still working to manage reimbursement questions and concerns that people may overuse telehealth.

But some providers think there’s no way to put the telehealth genie back in the bottle, imagining a hybrid approach to healthcare once the pandemic is finally over.

“The pandemic accelerated the realization that a lot of care needn’t be administered on-site, and that patients can be more comprehensively treated with care ‘arcs’ than with care episodes – wherever they are. It also accelerated the trend toward the consumerization of healthcare,” Miles Romney, eVisit cofounder and CTO, told MobiHealthNews in an email.

“At eVisit, our road map is continually guided by our customers’ needs, paired with our own vision for the future of care. What today is routinely called ‘virtual care’ will soon be just ‘care,’ in the same way that ‘telebanking’ (a term popularized in the ‘80s) is today just ‘banking.’”