Catapult Health, a provider of technology enhanced workplace health visits, has announced an investment from UCHealth, Denver, part of a $10 million round of follow-on investment.
The portion of the “significant” investment by UCHealth or what size of a stake in Catapult the seven-hospital, 100-clinic healthcare system obtained were undisclosed, but UCHealth is the largest investor in this second round, according to David Michel, the company's co-founder and CEO.
Other investors in the Series B round are Michel; his wife, Deborah, who is a co-founder and board secretary of the company; Jeffrey Smith, its chief technology officer; and Health Enterprise Partners, a New York private equity firm. The company will use the money to grow and hire more certified nurse practitioners.
"UCHealth's community wellness strategy is focused on working with employers and payers to keep people healthy in addition to caring for them when they have health concerns," said Dr. Bill Neff, chief medical officer at UCHealth, in a news release (PDF). "Catapult's concentration on preventive medicine and checkups delivered at worksites allows employers to reduce employee health risks and more effectively manage chronic disease."
Catapult already works with several other healthcare organizations, typically providing workplace wellness exams to their employees, David Michel said in an interview. “They also use us to reach out to their communities” in a co-branded service with that healthcare organization, he said.
Its service is part of an ongoing effort by employers to constrain soaring healthcare costs by bringing healthcare into the workplace.
The Catapult model uses a team of nurses who travel to an employer's workplace to do basic clinical tasks such as taking employees' vital signs, medical histories and blood work. Then, each employee sits for a telehealth visit with a nurse practitioner in Texas. All told, each encounter takes about 30 minutes and costs $130, Michel said.
“We're delivering basic preventive care at about half the cost of a typical checkup and it's more efficient, taking 30 minutes instead of half a day,” Michel said.
