The past three years of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a new era in telemedicine, but telehealth alone has its limits. The idea of a hybrid model of care is one that Matt McCambridge and Scott Sansovich, the co-founders of Eden Health, had been thinking about for years—going back to 2016, when McCambridge quit his job at VC firm Insight Partners to co-found Eden Health with Sansovich, who he met on the third day of college in the cafeteria when the two were freshmen at Harvard University.
Headquartered in New York City, Eden Health is a personal health platform designed to help companies and their employees navigate today’s complicated healthcare landscape across insurance, in-person and virtual care. Eden Health leverages technology to connect patients directly to a dedicated team of providers that manages their primary care, mental health, and care navigation needs. Every member is matched with a dedicated Care Team, which is composed of clinicians who can offer digital care around the clock, same-day in-person primary care, behavioral health services and benefits navigation. For employees who have access to Eden, they simply need to download the app on their phone.
Unlike many concierge services which focus on selling services to individuals, Eden Health focuses on selling services to employers. Employers are the largest buyer of health care in the US, purchasing health care for 160 million people, or 49% of the country's population.
Eden Health joined the Grand Central Tech residency program at Company Ventures as part of our fourth cohort in 2017. When he found out about the zero-equity, zero-rent program, McCambridge says, “I thought, ‘this seems too good to be true, to be able to work in this space and be around all of these different entrepreneurs.’” McCambridge and Sansovich applied and were accepted, and the rest is history. “Given the track record of organizations that come out of the residency program, given how beautiful the space is, and the additional resources Company Ventures has developed over time, it’s only made the program more compelling for startups.”
Eden Health has raised $99 million in funding, most recently raising a $60 million Series C round in February 2021. It counts Company Ventures among its investors, which also include Insight Partners, Max Ventures, Aspect Ventures, Flare Capital, Flexcap Ventures and PJC. When it comes to fundraising, it’s important to find investors who can be with you for the long haul. “It’s a long journey—it’s a long-term relationship,” McCambridge says. “Find investors who you can work with well and who can give good advice.” Though Eden Health provides services nationally now, it’s still headquartered in New York City—and for good reason, McCambridge says. “New York City has a super diverse array of capabilities—you have great tech talent, you have great marketing talent, financial acumen, great healthcare, talent and resources. It’s dense from a population standpoint. And it’s a strong market. You see excellent, early-stage teams building here. You see successful exits happening here.”
Today, Eden Health’s largest employer group has more than 300,000 members on their plan. In addition to working with over 100 employers across a large range of industries, Eden Health has also entered into partnerships with real estate companies to open in-person medical clinics. Eden Health’s goal for the rest of 2023 is focused on delivering a proven model to the large groups it services. Over time, McCambridge says, Eden Health’s additional product development will involve taking other factors about the health care journey that are difficult, and simplifying them for patients.
Eden Health’s mission since inception has been to create a world in which every person has a relationship with a trusted healthcare provider. Working at Insight Partners, McCambridge was exposed to some of the biggest challenges in healthcare. “We had this viewpoint that in order to change the way care was delivered, you need to do three things,” McCambridge recalls. “You need to employ the clinicians full time, because that allows you to change and support the change in their workflows, and how they collaborate among each other. You need to build the technology—not every piece of technology, but the technology that supports a close member relationship to the provider. And you need to have a business model that rewards you for doing things that you might otherwise not get rewarded for elsewhere in the system.” McCambridge says this allows Eden Health’s customers to save costs while improving care for employees.
McCambridge had seen family members have both positive or negative experiences within the U.S. healthcare system, experiences that were entirely contingent upon whether they had providers who they trusted. “If you had a blank sheet of paper and were thinking, ‘what's a good way to build a healthcare practice?’ I think that most people would say: providers should be available whenever I need them, so I can deal with my medical issues in a time-sensitive way. It should be convenient for me to get care.” The best way to do this, McCambridge and Sansovich surmised, was by offering a hybrid model that offered virtual and in-person services for patient care.
The core of Eden Health’s thesis has remained similar over time: To create a longitudinal and trusting clinical relationship between patient and provider. It's too hard to be patient, and it's too hard to have a trusted provider relationship between the provider and the member, McCambridge says. “At the end of the day, if you can help remove the barriers between providers and patients so they can just do what they need to do in terms of getting care done, then I think you're going to have a winning solution."