Investors have paid more and more attention to end-of-life care companies and advanced care businesses since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest example of this trend played out on Monday, with Palo Alto, California-based Vynca announcing it had raised another $30 million in growth capital.
The investment was led by Questa Capital with participation from existing investors including Generator Ventures, First Trust Capital Partners, 4100 Group and OCA Ventures.
“Millions of Americans do not have access to high-quality serious illness care, and our goal is to expand access nationally to every person in need,” Ryan Van Wert, CEO and co-founder of Vynca, said in a press release announcing the news.
Broadly, Vynca works with provider and payer partners to help manage complex, seriously ill populations. Its business model uses a mix of virtual palliative care, advance care planning, care coordination and symptom management services, among others.
The company has raised at least $37.7 million since its formation in 2013, according to the online startup database Crunchbase.
It previously closed a $10.3 million Series B round in June 2019. Vynca saw record growth the following year, with advance care planning technology solutions key in the company generating more than 1.16 million end-of-life planning documents in 2020, up 64% from the previous 12 months.
“With this latest round of funding, we are poised to further invest in our talent and technology, both valuable assets that will play such a significant role as we look to successfully expand the reach and impact of our offering moving forward,” Van Wert noted.
An estimated six in 10 Americans currently live with a chronic disease such as cancer, heart disease or Alzheimer’s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). About four in 10 live with multiple chronic diseases.
Those are exactly the types of patients that Vynca helps manage. And after two years of substantial growth, Vynca says it now serves “thousands” of patients through its platform, which is up and running in all 50 states.
“As investors, we have studied the space for several years and believe that Vynca is well-positioned to improve care quality at a national scale, especially in the context of an evolving value-based care environment,” Questa Capital Managing Partner Brad Sloan said in the release.
Previous research has found that advanced care planning tools like Vynca can help reduce hospitalizations by as much as 26% while also lowering health care costs and increasing community-based palliative care utilization.
Monday’s news comes roughly eight months after Vynca’s last big move – an acquisition of California-based palliative care and telehealth provider ResolutionCare. At the time, the deal further propelled the company into the clinical care space.
“It is well known that the vast majority of palliative care consultations are for advance care planning and goals of care conversations,” Van Wert told Hospice News at the time. “So moving into palliative care was a natural extension, and we are now able to support health care providers and health plans in providing the highest quality care for individuals with serious illness.”
There has been a brighter spotlight on innovative palliative care and advanced care models since early 2020, largely because serious and complex populations haven often had to postpone treatment and services due to the pandemic.
In a recent survey conducted in the U.K. by the Association for Palliative Medicine, for instance, 86% of respondents said their patients were now terminally ill due to treatment delays or late diagnosis.
“I’ve always said advance care planning needs to happen early and often,” Van Wert told Hospice News in April 2020. “What we are experiencing now is unfortunately proving why.”
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