Eden Health CEO Outlines Growth Strategy After $60M Series C Round

Eden Health's CEO discussed the company's latest funding round and the prospects for concierge care as the healthcare industry emerges from the worst of the pandemic.

Eden Health, the New York-based concierge primary care provider, announced Thursday it raised $60 million in its Series C funding round.

Eden, which was founded as a healthcare startup in 2017, has secured $100 million in total funding overall, according to a company press release.

Additionally, Eden stated that its annual recurring revenue increased 800% since the start of 2020, due in large part to the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and now covers 40,000 sponsored members.

In an interview with HealthLeaders, Matt McCambridge, CEO of Eden, discussed the company's latest funding round and the prospects for concierge care as the healthcare industry emerges from the worst of the pandemic.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

HealthLeaders: Can you walk me through the latest funding round and how it will aid in future growth plans for the company?

McCambridge: Our mission is to create a world where every person has a relationship with a trusted healthcare provider. This financing is going to help us continue to move closer to doing that. So, we always go back to this concept of a trusted clinical relationship, which is the foundation of any good system of clinical care. What we do is provide an advanced medical model that includes primary care, mental health, physical therapy navigation and that's delivered virtually. The key difference for us from other groups in the market is [the patient] gets the same provider and clinical team every single time so [they] can build those clinical relationships in the longitudinal.

The second piece is we provide in-person care, which we do in two ways. The first is where we have mobile providers who will go to the worksite of employers, or even go to the home, and then we also have the physical clinic infrastructure that we own and operate in multiple cities and we're growing that a lot.

When we think about what is next as part of this investment, it's about scaling a few things. One, scaling to more members and opening new geographies. Virtually, we're already in all 50 states, but from physical care standpoint, we're in New York, New Jersey. Chicago, and we're looking at Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Houston, and several other cities. We're growing out that footprint as well, making sure that everybody who is looking for it can get access.

The second piece is we're also scaling out our connectivity to additional specialties, we already do behavioral health and physical therapy, and then things like connected devices. Finally, we're going to continue to invest in our providers; all of our providers are full-time, and we think we have the best providers anywhere, so we want to keep making sure they can be successful.

HL: Eden has been so active and successful in the virtual care space, why are there plans to expand the company's brick-and-mortar footprint across the country?

McCambridge: We've had a brick-and-mortar [footprint] since we were founded. For our first product, we simultaneously launched our virtual care solution and our first brick-and-mortar location. The way I look at it is there are three themes that were accelerated by the pandemic.

The first is this actual virtual primary care model where you have a credible, real, accountable clinical relationship virtually, which is different from the kind of telehealth that we've had. The second is navigation; dealing with all the complexity of the healthcare system because healthcare has only gotten more complicated dealing with specialty care, etc. Then the third piece is an integration of virtual and physical. I think that the best version of healthcare is when you have both available.

The reason I said the pandemic has accelerated that is that there are certain things that [patients] simply can't get virtually. Testing is an easy example, everyone's looking for testing. Also, screenings, certain types of screenings need to draw blood. From our viewpoint, we see that virtual primary care is an incredible tool but long-term, the integration of virtual and physical is the absolute best version of healthcare that you can offer.

HL: How has the pandemic affected Eden's bottom line and what effect has it had on concierge care in general?

McCambridge: There are three themes that we have been investing in: longitudinal virtual clinical relationships, navigation, and integration of care. We saw that as the three things got dramatically accelerated by the pandemic, we just happened to be in a good position as [a company] that was providing those working with employers and frankly, able to manage all the needs that an employer might have with regard to keeping their central employees at the worksite. We were situated in a good place and so for us, I don't see those things going away. I think that there's been a big, fundamental shift in terms of appetite for virtual care, but that was already moving, in terms of navigation being critical.

Relative to the market, I think you see a lot of people just turning into the way that we were already investing in. Whether it's large group announcing virtual primary care products or newer companies who are emerging around the way here. I think it's a huge net benefit to companies starting off, and frankly, there are so many people who need access to higher quality healthcare services that I hope that we don't near an end to this wave of people trying to access this space and provide care in new ways.

HL: Who do you consider Eden's most significant competitors and what are some of the biggest obstacles facing the company in 2021?

McCambridge: It's interesting, I feel like in the healthcare delivery system we kind of do each other a bit of a disservice with the competitiveness, in some ways. Ultimately, one organization can't completely serve a patient alone. Whether it's simply a pharmacy and a hospital system, or for us, our patients travel through the healthcare system outside of our doors, we just happen to help him along the way. I think that [healthcare] is so interconnected and interdependent that we need to find more ways to collaborate. I love where we've been able to partner with healthcare systems to work with them on downstream care that makes that care better for the patient and better for the specialist, by the way, because the specialist is getting individuals who are definitely going to need their service. It's just a better holistic model.

I would like us, as a system, to be able to collaborate better because just the fact of the matter is that if somebody has two conditions, the way it's set up today, [the patient] is seeing a bunch of different providers. There's a lot of ability to help people and support different startups. I don't know if that's a risk so much to the business for Eden, but I think it would be a huge benefit to patient care and to the rest of the system. In general, there could be more collaboration because patients utilize different services and that would be a better experience for everybody.

HL: Is there anything you'd like to say to our audience, which is primarily comprised of hospital and health system leaders?

McCambridge: I would say that there are things that we might be uniquely good at Eden: getting engagement from patients, the patient experience that they're going to have in terms of the services that we provide, and the coordination of care when they get outside of the doors. There are things that we from the early days that we built around people processes instead of models. There are things that we never planned to get into at this time. The systems that we would work with are so good at surgery, as an example, or anything downstream from what we're providing.

I just think that if you want to compete in the system, think about that full patient experience where groups like Eden could partner with you to provide the things that we're uniquely good at, knowing that one of our core competencies is that coordination and integration with the rest of the system. We thought about that not as 'We're going to go disrupt everything,' we thought about it as, 'How do we become an important player that is providing something different that patients, employers, and maybe some payers are looking for?' I think that can work with other healthcare institutions that are looking to provide different types of experience for their patients and even physicians.

Jack O'Brien is the Content Team Lead and Finance Editor at HealthLeaders, an HCPro brand.