Long before COVID made telemedicine central to our healthcare system, Savannah-based Corstrata saw opportunities to innovate and lead in the virtual space.
We last caught up with Corstrata back in 2017 to learn about how the team was building out a virtual platform for wound and ostomy care appointments. Since then, founder Joseph Ebberwein said the team has moved from “development mode” to become an important part of the growing home healthcare environment.
That market is expected to grow to $662 billion over the next five years.
Corstrata has had a unique look at how healthcare needs have shifted in our post-pandemic world. On the patient side, Ebberwein said the pandemic caused many people to forgo routine care. But it also “accelerated the acceptance” of telehealth by patients who may not have used it before.
On the provider side, nurses are burned out and looking for better, more efficient ways to connect with patients.
Corstrata has grown to help both sides of the provider-patient relationship.
“Because we are 100% virtual, we’re attracting a lot of nurses who are tired of the physicality of working in a hospital or driving around to home health places,” Ebberwein said while adding that they now have a long waiting list of nurses looking to join their network.
Corstrata has grown to have nurses in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. To date, the platform has facilitated 22,000 wound and ostomy telehealth consults. Critically, Ebberwein said that 22% of patients said they would have gone to an emergency room if Corstrata was not available to help.
Helping those patients outside of the ER is critical as hospitals deal with ongoing staffing shortages.
Moving forward, Corstrata is hyperfocused on working and expanding within the “hospital at home” model.
The team is also helping medical manufacturers provide product support to new users in remote settings and has launched a private pay, direct-to-consumer model for ostomy patients trying to navigate such a lifestyle change from the comfort of home.
