🎇 Lot’s of stuff poppin’! Let’s jump in. 🧨 

Repatient

You may have seen that in May Cleveland Clinic announced a policy requiring patients to pay their copays at or before check-in for nonemergency, outpatient appointments. They’ve basically walked that back, according to cleveland.com.

But…

Rising patient cost-sharing and a growing rate of copay delinquencies are a thing.

Louisville-based Repatient, LLC was organized in late 2020. Chris Blakeley [CB] is the Founder and Chief Operating Officer. In addition to several startups, Chris has worked at AEGON and YUM!.

HD: Let’s get it out of the way. Where’d you go to school?
CB: Since I am from Louisville, that means where did you go to high school and college so I graduated from Male High School and the University of Louisville for both undergrad and my MBA.
HD: Go Bulldogs!

HD: For those that don’t know Repatient, what does the company do?
CB: Repatient increases patient payments to providers by 20%. In several recent studies, over 80% of patients have said they want to receive digital messages about their medical bills and have flexible payment options including the ability to pay over time for larger balances. By meeting these patient needs, we are able to significantly increase patient payments and provider cash flow.

HD: How did Credit Fair-e–your prior startup–lead you to Repatient? Or did it?
CB: While I was still working on Credit Fair-e one of our partners introduced me to my co-founder at Repatient, Tim Rooney. He had an idea to offer payment plans to patients so they could pay their increasing out of pocket medical expenses over time in an affordable way. This idea immediately resonated with me because when my youngest daughter was 10 months old she contracted RSV and was in the hospital for 6 days and on oxygen for 5 days. My wife and I had a high deductible health plan at the time and incurred about $3,000 in costs. We were looking for options to spread that over time but could not find a solution. With that personal experience in mind I pivoted to founding Repatient and bringing solutions to patients and providers to solve this problem.

HD: Are all your investors local?
CB: We have a combination of local and national investors. About 50% of investors are local to Louisville and the remaining are national investors, highlighted by Mucker Ventures, based in Los Angeles

HD: What’s on the horizon for Repatient?
CB: We are continuing to grow our customer base. We are offering our products in over 200 hospitals and other medical practices across the country. We recently launched a collaboration with Johnson & Johnson MedTech to bring our products to the 11,000 Ambulatory Surgery Centers they work with in the US. We are seeing great response so far and are excited about the growth this will drive for Repatient in the coming years.

Since it’s been hot…

Mayo Clinic gets $50M gift to boost innovation

“The money will support Mayo’s Innovation Exchange, a program that helps healthcare startups and entrepreneurs bring new technologies to patients.”

Must be nice.

VC selection

Bet on the jockey or the horse?

“Team is most successful at explaining VC funding of at least $1 million, but does not explain larger financings or success.”

J&J MedTech is looking for AI technology

“To help accelerate the use of AI in surgery, Johnson & Johnson MedTech has launched the Polyphonic™ AI Fund for Surgery QuickFire Challenge.” Grant funding up to $100,000 and mentorship.

My fellow Kentuckians—apply. Win!

NP Entrepreneurship

“In the changing U.S. healthcare scene, the role of Nurse Practitioners (NPs) is expanding. By 2024, their ranks have grown to more than 385,000, with a notable growth in NP entrepreneurship.” Interesting 2024 report by Single Aim’s Chris Turitzin.

Check yourself out, Louisville.

Biomarkers of Aging

This episode of the Decoding Longevity podcast features Varun Dwaraka, Director of Research and Principal Investigator at Lexington, KY-based TruDiagnostic.

GLP-1s.

Super interesting read from Ashwin Sharma, MD.

Survey

If you haven’t filled this out yet… why not?

Party on.