What You Should Know:
– RxLive, a provider of population health pharmacy solutions, today announced a $5 million Series A funding round led by SpringTide with participation by Cardinal Health. RxLive has raised a total of $8 million to date.
– As value-based pharmacy care models expand beyond the retail pharmacy setting RxLive will use the funding to expand its engineering, analytics, and sales and marketing teams, with particular investment in the continuous improvement of its AI and the functionality of its medication management platform.
Tackling Medication Mismanagement, a $500 Billion Problem
The healthcare industry is undergoing three profound changes, each of which is pointing healthcare providers to RxLive’s medication management software, telepharmacy services, and population health pharmacy analytics platform.
– Value-Based Care: Public and private payers increasingly compensate healthcare providers on the outcomes they produce, not the services they provide. This shift is undeniable, but a major obstacle for providers’ performance is poor medication adherence by patients. In fact, research suggests that 50% of patients fail to take medications properly, leading to $500 billion of healthcare spending wasted annually and the deaths of 140,000 seniors.
– Rapid Adoption of Telemedicine: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply of and demand for telemedicine services have exploded. Among Medicare patients, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there was a 63-fold increase in telehealth utilization during the pandemic.
– Rising Pharmacy Costs: Pharmacy spend is growing as a percent of overall healthcare costs and this has payers pushing risk down to delivery organizations and is bringing congressional focus on pharmacy cost transparency.
RxLive, the first-ever comprehensive population health telepharmacy solution and network of pharmacists, addresses each of these trends with:
– A data analytics engine that identifies patients who are most at-risk for medication mismanagement.
– A telepharmacy platform that offers patients quick and convenient access to clinical pharmacists.
– A proprietary medical management platform that has been custom built for the needs and workflows of the population health pharmacist.
“For too long, the pharmacist has been seen simply as the person behind the drugstore counter where people pick up their prescriptions, not as a key piece of a patient’s care team,” said Dr. Kristen Engelen, PharmD, a clinical pharmacist and RxLive’s Co-founder and Chief Pharmacy Officer. But now, with the move to value-based care, the overnight adoption of telemedicine, and growing importance and emphasis on managing pharmacy spend, RxLive is putting clinical pharmacists back where they belong. We give patients the one-on-one medication expertise and attention they need to improve quality of life, and the technology and services healthcare organizations need to improve outcomes.”
