Senior dwelling communities usually depend on paper or legacy programs to handle their operations, making it tough for healthcare suppliers to maintain monitor of residents’ wants. August Well being is on a mission to alter that, with a SaaS system created particularly for senior residences. The corporate has raised a $15 million Collection A, led by Matrix Companions and returning investor Basic Catalyst. The spherical additionally included participation from Dan Baty, the founding father of Columbia Pacific, and Arine Whitman, founding father of Formation Capital. This brings August Well being’s complete raised to this point to $17.6 million.
The corporate’s vertical SaaS that manages care and compliance for 1000’s for senior dwelling residents, and it additionally features a digital care platform that permits telehealth visits with physicians. Co-founder Erez Cohen says that about 74% of senior dwelling communities are nonetheless run on paper.
Cohen is a second time founder whose first startup, Mapsense, was acquired by Apple in 2015. He met his co-founder, Dr. Justin Schram, at a playground in Bernal Heights in 2020, the place each their youngsters had been taking part in.
Cohen had lately left his place at Apple, the place he led an engineering and product group after Mapsense was acquired, and was searching for mission-driven alternatives. At the moment, Schram was medical director of Landmark Well being, a healthcare group that focuses on older sufferers.
Many resided in senior dwelling communities, giving Schram an opportunity to see how a whole lot of residences nonetheless operated on paper and legacy tech programs, making it more durable for Landmark’s suppliers to achieve entry to details about their sufferers. For instance, if a supplier wished to know a sufferers’ remedy listing, care plan, historical past of latest occasions or weight and vitals developments, they needed to dig by paper data onsite. This offered an issue, particularly when there was an emergency.
“Justin shared his expertise with me working in senior dwelling communities, the place a few of society’s most important work is going down, but the communities are underserved by trendy, prime quality know-how to assist their in depth and complicated care operations,” Cohen advised TechCrunch, including that COVID underscored these points.
The 2 began visiting communities the place Dr. Schram beforehand had sufferers and noticed a possibility to assist directors and caregivers by constructing software program that might automates busywork, simplify compliance and streamline group companies, Cohen added.
Folks working at senior care residences usually wrestle with time-consuming paperwork, together with move-in packets, face sheets, emergency binders, remedy administration data and repair plans. “When some data will get up to date in a single place, it usually stays outdated within the different, and the supply of reality grow to be tough to establish,” Cohen stated. “This has led to lawsuits, it usually stays outdated, the place disparate data have resulted in damage or dying.”
Paper data additionally make monitoring fundamental analytics very tough. For instance, Cohen stated senior care residence staffs usually have bother monitoring (for instance) what number of falls have occurred of their facility, how a lot they need to cost for brand spanking new residents and the typical acuity throughout communities.
Along with impacting resident care, this results in employees burnout. Many senior residences are coping with employees shortages and struggling to recruit youthful employees members, particularly throughout COVID, Cohen stated.
August Well being helps by making a digital cost for every resident with all of the core data wanted to coordinate their care, talk with relations and exterior suppliers, preserve compliance with state rules and run companies with visibility into analytics. For instance, it digitizes the move-in course of, gathering the medical, social and private histories of every affected person, in addition to their preferences, and syncing it in actual time.
Members of the family get entry to a portal for filling out data, updating data, getting visibility on the resident’s care and choices for fee. That knowledge goes on to a resident care file, the place the residence’s employees can conduct assessments, create care plans, chart progress notes, monitor incidents, generate and retailer important paperwork and handle drugs and monitor developments.
Importantly, August Well being’s compliance instruments additionally carry out a real-time analysis of regulatory compliance based mostly on state-specific necessities and generates computerized reminders if necessities are lacking or should be up to date, Cohen stated. “The answer helps monitor and automate compliance, which is a big ache level for patrons, traditionally requiring an entire lot of psychological load, sticky notes and Excel spreadsheets to manually monitor due dates to keep away from quotation or fines.”
Cohen stated August Well being’s greatest rivals are legacy programs that had been initially constructed for different industries. For instance, Yardi was created as a basic real-estate and property administration software program, however added assisted dwelling care instruments by acquisition. PointClickCare, however, was constructed as a post-acute, expert nursing software program and is a hospital-level EHR, which suggests it’s usually tough for Assisted Residing customers to navigate. Different choices embody AL Benefit, Tabula Professional and Caring Knowledge.
The startup monetizes by its two primary merchandise: a Transfer-in solely product that’s restricted to preliminary consumption workflow. August Well being prices a charge per lively resident every month. The vast majority of its clients are additionally on its end-to-end Assisted Residing software program platform, which additionally prices communities per lively resident every month.
“We align with our clients so they don’t seem to be paying for empty beds however as an alternative just for precise residents in the neighborhood,” stated Cohen.
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