TailorMed is on a Mission to End Financial Toxicity & Bad Debt
By Netalie Nadivi, Partner, Triventures
We are excited to announce Triventures’ latest investment in TailorMed, a company on a mission to bring an end to financial toxicity and the resulting bad debt in the US healthcare system.
Living in Israel, we often take for granted what excellent care we have in this country from both the clinical and economic perspective. But on the other side of the ocean, you will find a broken healthcare system in the US. While treatment costs (drugs and hospitalizations) continue to rise and health insurance deductibleד and co-pays soar, a phenomenon known as financial toxicity is at an all-time high. ‘Financial Toxicity’ is used to describe the distress and hardship incurred from economic burdens due to medical care (most frequently used when referring to patients undergoing cancer treatment). In much the same way that physical side-effects of clinical treatment cause toxicities, financial problems following diagnosis contribute to poorer quality of life, non-adherence to treatment and delayed medical care. Financial toxicity not only devastates a patient’s economic well-being and impacts outcomes, but also creates significant bad debt for care providers which impacts the bottom-line.
At Triventures, we believe that the most valuable solutions for healthcare are the ones that can show immediate impact on economics while simultaneously have a positive influence on outcomes. TailorMed ticks the box on both these crucial parameters with its data driven, real-time analytics platform.
Cancer Kills…Financially
Sit back for some chilling facts illustrating the financial toxicity epidemic….
Cancer patients and their families pay ~$4 billion a year for out-of-pocket costs associated with treatment[1]. While these out-of-pocket expenses constitute no more than 20% of the total cost of care (the remaining 80% are covered by the health insurer), the financial impact on individuals and their families can be toxic. Below is a graph demonstrating patients decreasing ability to pay rising deductibles.
Over half of persons with cancer have experienced house repossession, bankruptcy, loss of independence and relationship breakdowns[2]. Cancer patients are ~2.5 times more likely to file for bankruptcy than those unaffected by cancer[3].
On the flip side of financial toxicity suffered by patients, healthcare providers, whether community or hospital oncology centers, are accumulating massive bad debt resulting from delinquent healthcare bills. More than a third (36%) of hospitals collect at least $10M in bad debt each year, half of which do not expect to recover more than 10% of that debt from payors or patients[4].
There is a Solution… brought to you by TailorMed
TailorMed’s SaaS solution improves healthcare providers’ financial performance by automatically assessing the entire patient therapeutic journey and identifying cost-savings opportunities. The platform empowers healthcare organizations to increase revenue by significantly reducing the phenomenon of financial toxicity. By using a variety of data sources and advanced analytics, TailorMed’s lead product delivers end-to-end automation for financial navigation, streamlines all steps of the process, from benefit investigation, out-of-pocket cost estimation, financial optimization recommendation all the way to enrolling patients into and managing approved care-financing programs.
Additionally, TailorMed is offering healthcare providers Financial Insights, an analytics and reporting dashboard that tracks, measures and reports an organization’s financial navigation processes KPIs in real time and allows administrators and financial executives to measure the impact on the center’s bottom line.
Ultimately, TailorMed’s existing suite of solutions and product roadmap deliver undeniable financial value to healthcare organizations while mitigating the prevalence of financial toxicity and creating an environment where more patients can stay focused on what really matter, getting healthy and maintaining their health.
In an 8-month study covering 245 patients at Munson’s Cowell Family Cancer Center, TailorMed was able to demonstrate a 3x increase in financial navigators’ productivity while generating savings of $3.5M for the center. Clara Lambert, Oncology Financial Navigator at Munson: “TailorMed has built a comprehensive financial navigation solution that encompasses all aspects of our cancer center’s processes. By using TailorMed, I was able to work more efficiently, keep up with savings opportunities, be more proactive in my outreach and provide the necessary support our patients need.”
Why Triventures Invested in TailorMed
We’re often asked what are the ingredients that make Triventures’ pull the trigger on an investment. While there is no cookie-cutter answer, there are some key factors that come together in any given venture that can get us excited. In the case of TailorMed, we met the CEO prior to the company’s seed funding when it was just a bright and talented guy with a big idea and a decent understanding of the US healthcare system. When we re-connected a year later, TailorMed presented itself as one of the fastest progressing companies in digital health that we have yet seen, over-delivering on the promise that ‘the guy with the idea’ pitched and we discovered that the both the founders, Srulik Dvorsky and Adam Siton, had developed an unprecedented understanding and expertise about the intricacies and pain points in the US healthcare system — they breathe it, live it and as a result of this intimate knowledge coupled with superb execution capabilities, they will tackle it. TailorMed presents a rarely seen value proposition in healthcare– improving providers revenues while helping patients as a direct by-product. These are the types of solutions that will garner the attention of the administrators and decision makers in healthcare. We are honored to be part of this journey and support TailorMed as it brings a much-needed solution to a bleeding US healthcare system.
About Triventures
Triventures is a venture capital fund that invests in transformational health, from life sciences to lifestyle. The fund focuses on disruptive data driven solutions that implement AI, machine and deep learning to impact the quality, cost and experience of healthcare. To date, Triventures has invested in ventures in personalized medicine, cyber security for healthcare, disease management and adherence, e-commerce health services as well as in device companies in fields such as cardiovascular, orthopedics, colorectal surgery and ophthalmology. The fund is strategically located in Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley, the top geographical clusters of innovation in the world and has strong partnerships with healthcare industry leaders, providers and consumer electronics companies which enable it to contribute significant value to its portfolio companies when commercially integrating into markets. Among Triventures’ notable strategic investors are Medtronic, Abbott, Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson, Cardinal Health and Intermountain Healthcare.
[1] https://www.fightcancer.org/sites/default/files/Costs%20of%20Cancer%20-%20Final%20Web.pdf
[2] Death or Debt? National Estimates of Financial Toxicity in Persons with Newly-Diagnosed Cancer, Adrienne M. Gilligan (et. al), The American Journal of Medicine, October 2018
[3] https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2016/01/cancer-bankruptcy-death-study-financial-toxicity.html
[4] http://sage-growth.com/index.php/news/press-release-bad-debt-exceeds-10m-third-organizations-lack-confidence-exists-much-recoverable/
