Today PeerWell, a San Francisco, CA-based PreHab company helping patients prepare physically and mentally for orthopedic surgery and recover faster has raised $6.5M in Series A funding led by OMERS Ventures with participation from investors Emmett Shear (Co-Founder CEO of Twitch) and Travis May (CEO of Datavant).
Existing investors include XSeed Capital and angel investors Auren Hoffman (CEO SafeGraph, Co-founder of LiveRamp), Kevin Lin (COO of Twitch), Michael Seibel (CEO of Y Combinator), Humble Lukanga, George Mathew (CEO Kespry), Anne Mathew (Stanford Healthcare), Patrick McKenna (Founder One America Works), Charlene Frizzera (Former Administrator of CMS), Joel Jewitt (Co-founder LiveRamp), Arian Foster (ex-NFL), Glover Quin (NFL), Brandon Marshall (NFL), Duane Brown (NFL), and Malik Jackson (NFL).
Tackling The $25B Orthopedic Surgery Market
Experts estimate that the demand for orthopedic surgeries will grow by 77 percent over the next 10 years with a predicted 50 percent or more of these cases completed in an outpatient setting. Founded in 2015 by Manish Shah, Navin Gupta, and Evan Minamoto, PeerWell is a surgery optimization platform that has helped thousands of patients with musculoskeletal conditions prepare for surgery or avoid it altogether. PeerWell is an extension of the healthcare team that works to lower patient risk, control costs, and improve return-to-work times.
PeerWell’s evidence-based platform addresses the five pillars of health optimization: Physical Therapy, Nutrition, Pain & Anxiety, Health Literacy, and Environmental Preparation. PeerWell collects meaningful data that helps workers’ compensation insurers, payers, third-party administrators, and providers achieve better outcomes, make informed decisions, and reduce the cost of care.
Through continued partnerships with large claims administrators, employers, and Medicare Advantage plans, workers across the United States are being offered PeerWell’s musculoskeletal programs.
Accelerated Expansion of Musculoskeletal Surgery Optimization Platform
PeerWell plans to leverage the Series A funding to fast-track the commercial rollout of its worker’s compensation surgery optimization platform which has improved patient outcomes and reduced costs in several clinical deployments. PeerWell is the only patient-centered, digital platform to address the whole patient and full musculoskeletal journey—from pain management and surgery avoidance to surgery optimization and guided recovery.
Financial Impact of Musculoskeletal Issues
“125 million Americans struggle with daily musculoskeletal issues which accounts for 10% of total healthcare spending in the United States. Nearly half of this total orthopedic care spending comes from elective procedures in insured adults. PeerWell helps workers’ compensation programs, employer health plans, and payers support patients with pain and mobility issues who are facing complex procedures and surgery. Our interactive digital programs guide patients while reducing costs of care and accurately predicting return-to-work times,” said PeerWell CEO Manish Shah.
Clinically Proven Reduction in Costs & Patient Outcomes
Leveraging evidence-based health science, PeerWell lowers episode of care costs and improves key patient outcome metrics:
Average Hospital Length of Stay: The average LOS after surgery (total knee arthroplasty) in the PeerWell prehabilitation group was 26% shorter than the control group. On average, PeerWell users remained in hospital for 2.0 days where the control group spent 2.7 days.
Discharge Disposition: 77.2% of patients were discharged without home medical assistance required (compared to an average of just 42.8%). In addition, only 1.8% of PeerWell users required discharge to a Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) after surgery compared to 21.8% in the control group.
Prehabilitation: Research has shown that people who prehab require less home assistance, have better pain scores, muscle strength, etc. Studies have shown that patients who PreHab have a 29% reduction in post-acute care use.
Traction/Milestones
PeerWell has direct partnerships with Healthcare Outcomes Performance Company (HOPCo), Medicare Advantage plans like the Golden State Medicare Health Plan, Henry Ford Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, Cedars Sinai, Ascension Crittenton Hospital, etc.
“With PeerWell, our patients are armed with the best tools for the most efficient care. We’ve seen outcomes improve which impacts the entire network- from patients to payers. With daily digital guidance and monitoring, our musculoskeletal patients receive care tailored to their progress and their needs, which can optimize recovery,” said Dr. Jacofsky, Chairman and CEO of HOPCo.
“Musculoskeletal issues are considerably costly for employers and the American healthcare system as a whole,” says Michael Yang, Managing Partner at OMERS Ventures. “PeerWell’s surgery optimization platform takes into account the entire patient and full episode while successfully reducing costs for worker’s compensation insurers and employers. It’s a massive innovation in an area that is in desperate need of attention, and we believe PeerWell’s approach to revolutionizing the surgical experience will deliver significant value for overloaded medical programs globally.”
