Patientco, a healthcare patient payments platform, has raised a $28 million Series B funding round led by growth-stage fund Accel-KKR; existing investor BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners/Sandbox Advantage Fund also participated. The capital will be used to increase the Atlanta-headquartered company’s staff by 40 percent and expand sales and marketing across the country.
Founded in 2009, Patientco is a consumer payments company focused exclusively on the healthcare space. In an interview last year, Patientco CEO Bird Blitch told Hypepotamus that a quarter of healthcare costs can be attributed to administrative work.
The Patientco platform automates the administration of payments, freeing up hospital administrators to do more important work, and provides analytics to help healthcare systems build a better patient experience.
Blitch said that clients can see over $13 million more coming in once they’ve integrated the platform into their systems. Last month the company crossed the $1 billion payments processed milestone, reaching 10 million patients across 2,000 healthcare systems.
With this influx of capital, the company will look to cover more ground across the country. A company representative says that areas of focus will be the West and Midwest.
They’re also investing in product innovation. The company recently launched a Smart Patient Financial Engagement Platform, designed to tailor individualized payment plans and financing to each patient. In an era of increasing healthcare costs — when, according to a Federal Reserve report, 40 percent of Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency bill — these tools aim to make healthcare more affordable.
“We just launched SmartFinance and will be educating the market on its advantages for a while,” says Patientco’s Director of Marketing Josh Byrd. “We are always working on products and features that help create a better patient payment experience and as a result improve financial outcomes for health systems.”
These patient and provider-focused solutions are what attracted KKR-Accel to the company, according to the firm. The two have been in discussions since 2015.
“Patientco has a differentiated approach to the patient payments problem in healthcare, leveraging its end-to-end platform to make every patient financial engagement better than the last. We believe Patientco will make a lasting positive impact on healthcare, both for patients and health systems on the Patientco platform,” said David Cusimano, Accel-KKR Principal, in a statement.