Health care investors have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the post-acute and senior care spaces over the past several months.
The latest example is Element5, which closed a $15 million Series A round on Tuesday.
Founded in late 2019, not long before the initial COVID-19 surge, Element5 helps home health agencies and other post-acute care providers automate otherwise tedious, time-consuming tasks, including the authorization process. The San Jose, California-based startup does so by using a mix of AI and robotic process automation (RPA), according to co-founder and CEO Joe Randesi.
“We are automating cumbersome workflows to help operations run more efficiently, so providers can spend less time, energy and money on the repetitive administrative tasks that are required to deliver patient care,” Randesi told Home Health Care News. “That allows them to spend more time caring about the patient.”
The Series A round was led by global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from Maxwell Investment Partners as well.
Considering their deep home health ties, landing both of those backers is a big deal for Element5, Randesi said.
On its end, for example, Insight Partners was among the early backers of Kinnser Software, the company eventually acquired by Mediware, which rebranded to WellSky in 2018. Netsmart is also an Insight Partners portfolio company.
Meanwhile, Randesi described Maxwell as “titans” of the home health industry.
“We feel extremely fortunate to be partners with both Maxwell and Insight Partners,” he noted.
As part of Insight Partners’ investment, Jared Rosen is joining the board of directors at Element5.
Moving forward, Element5 plans to use the $15 million to accelerate the development of its product while strengthening its market presence. The technology company has already seen considerable growth since its 2019 launch, having secured about 100 contracts to date with its relatively small team.
The COVID-19 pandemic contributed to some of that early momentum, according to Randesi, who had also co-founded an EHR platform back in 2007.
“We sold our first deal, I would say, probably a week before the pandemic began,” he explained. “Our tagline is ‘rethink work,’ and I think a byproduct of the pandemic is that a lot of operators have had to rethink the way work gets done, whether it’s remote offices or [something else]. Automation just seemed to really resonate.”
Prior to its Series A, Element5 had raised a $3.5 million seed round.
“We are really on a mission to change the way post-acute care operates. And when people talk about post-acute care or automation, we want Element5 to be front and center of that conversation,” Randesi said. “We’re purposefully building for post-acute care providers. We’re not building for hospitals. We’re not building for physician practices. We’re building for the post-acute care market — and there’s a lot of value in that.”
The post Looking to ‘Rethink Work,’ Post-Acute Care Startup Element5 Raises $15M appeared first on Home Health Care News.
