Nashville, Tennessee-based appointment booking service MyHealthDirect raised $8 million in a mix of venture capital and debt from Chrysalis Ventures, Arboretum Ventures, and Ares Capital Corp. The debt came from Ares Capital Corp in the form of a senior credit facility. This brings the company's total funding to at least $12 million.

MyHealthDirect plans to use these funds to scale up its offerings for hospital and provider partners.

"This additional round of funding will enable us to continue expanding our business to meet growing market demand. MyHealthDirect solutions are delivering repeatable, scalable value by attracting new patients, retaining existing patients, and optimizing practices and health systems," MyHealthDirect CEO Tom Cox said in a statement. "We are focused on helping providers transform the patient experience outside the moment of care." 

MyHealthDirect has targeted its offering at health systems, health plans, and medical groups. Through MyHealthDirect's web-based portal, these facilities can add appointment scheduling to their existing website or health portal and provide physicians, nurses, and call centers with the ability to refer patients as well as schedule their appointments in the portal. The system can also help health systems, health plans, and medical groups schedule appointments and make referrals with external healthcare groups, including imaging centers and specialists. For health systems, the service also offers a reminder system for providers who want to send alerts to patients.

While there has been a trend in direct-to-consumer, branded appointment booking services in recent years, MyHealthDirect is a white-label product.

The company books 1.7 million appointments annually and reaches over million patients through its partnership with "some of the nation’s largest" health systems and payors. MyHealthDirect customers include Healthcare Corporation of America, a few components of UnitedHealthcare, and Amerigroup Community Care of Maryland.

In the future, the company plans to build out more products that cater to the patients' experience, MyHealthDirect CFO Susan Brownie told MobiHealthNews. These future offerings might include products that focus on patient satisfaction and make use of data analytics.