Vynca Execs: $30 Million Investment to Fuel Multistate Expansion

California-based Vynca Health Care recently landed $30 million in growth capital to build out its palliative care platform. Hospice News connected with Vynca executives about the keys that are unlocking doors to investors for palliative care providers and associated industries.

Questa Capital led the charge on Vynca’s most recent funding round, with participation from existing investors 4100 Group, First Trust Capital Partners, Generator Ventures and OCA Ventures. The infusion of capital will foster investments in technology and staffing, according to Vynca CEO Ryan Van Wert, M.D., and Brian Mistler, its chief clinical operations and people officer.

Physician and entrepreneur Van Wert co-founded advance care planning solution developer company Vynca in 2013 to create solutions that guide and document advance care planning discussions and make them easily accessible to necessary stakeholders, including patients, families and clinicians.

Mistler previously served as president and chief operating officer of ResolutionCare prior to its acquisition by Vynca last year. This marked Vynca’s first move into the palliative care provider space. Resolution developed and used a community-based telehealth model aimed at supporting the hospice and palliative care workforce, caregivers and patients and families.

Technology will play a role in the ability to attract, retain and support employees and improve quality of care, according to Van Wert and Mistler, who shared their perspectives with Hospice News in an email.

How does the investment received advance Vynca’s overall growth strategies?

Vynca is focused on improving the patient experience, decreasing costs and increasing quality. This funding will allow us to expand our clinical care delivery model across the country and accelerate our technology development. Our technology and services decrease unwanted health care utilization and ensure care is delivered in the appropriate setting. As more people and plans become aware of what we offer, we expect growth to continue to follow. 

What will this new line of funds enable Vynca to accomplish with your current palliative care platform that perhaps was not possible previously?

The latest round of funding will further enable growth in our technology platforms and clinical care delivery teams. We are excited to provide more high-quality, whole-person care for individuals with serious illness. When individuals have access to palliative care and care preferences are known then quality of care is improved, unwanted health care utilization is reduced and the cost of care is lowered.

This funding will also allow us to continue to invest in our talent — to further grow and diversify our teams that support our services.

Do you expect to pursue further provider acquisitions similar to ResolutionCare. Will this new round of funding advance that goal?

This funding will be used to expand our integrated palliative care platform across all of California and into more states to help more families facing serious illness.

We partner today with a range of health plans, accountable care organizations (ACOs), primary care providers and specialists. We expect growing partnerships to be a core part of strategy as we expand across the country.

What are Vynca’s top priorities in its plan to expand with a new palliative care platform?

Finding the right talent is one of our top priorities, and we think we’re in a great position to do so. We’re a fast-paced, fun entrepreneurial environment that is incredibly passionate about transforming end-of-life care.

More than 12 million adults in the United States are living with a serious illness, and they often need and desire enhanced support and care coordination while pursuing curative treatment. Vynca addresses this problem by providing technology-enabled clinical services that help patients meet their complex medical and social needs. Through personalized palliative care services and digital advance care planning, our top priority is to ensure seriously ill individuals are provided access to an interdisciplinary palliative care team, are empowered in their current and future care, and they have access to critical documentation.

What pieces of the larger financial pie do staffing and technology represent? Why were these important and “valuable” assets for expansion for Vynca?

As billions are spent on the care for individuals in their last year of life and these costs and the number of individuals living with serious illness grow, educating clinicians to have conversations around serious illness and future care preferences continues to be a challenge. While there is technology available to digitally document conversations and care preferences, they are often only available to clinicians who have access to that specific technology — many times only within the four walls of a hospital.

Vynca offers an integrated serious illness, tech-enabled platform that allows health care organizations to manage the lives of their most vulnerable, expensive patients — and not limited to the hospital setting. While some organizations offer just technology, engagement in advance care planning conversations or palliative care services, Vynca provides all of these. Technology and analytics are used to identify and assess individuals who would most benefit from an advanced care planning conversation and palliative care services and the technology needed to digitally capture information, share it across care teams and coordinate care.

Combining staffing and technology together rather seamlessly, we are able offer a tech-enabled advance care planning platform with single sign-on and integration into the electronic health record. Through best practice workflows, care teams and patients are able to complete, view, digitally sign and share advance care plans across care settings. Our interdisciplinary team provides supportive care when and where an individual needs it — often from home and through telehealth services.

What do you see as challenges to building a deeper palliative care presence? How will you overcome any hurdles on the horizon?

The adoption of telehealth used to be our biggest challenge but COVID has radically transformed the landscape. Vynca has a digital training site that provides step-by-step instructions on all segments of the technology platform. This training module covers all types of users. We provide administration, end-user and organizational-level training. Our technology is built upon best practices, and we pride ourselves on how user-friendly and intuitive our workflows are when used in clinical settings or by the patient.

We partner with health systems, more than 120 U.S. hospitals, eight state registries, post acute providers, ACOs and health plans such as Blue Shield of California and Partnership HealthPlan of California. Our care network expands across all states nationwide, and houses more than 1 million individual care plans. Vynca also has key strategic partnerships, including Cerner Corporation, who selected us as their advance care planning vendor.

End users vary from clinicians, social workers, to seriously ill individuals. We’ve overcome a number of challenges and have entered a new phase of growth in which one of our top challenges is time — how quickly we can collaborate — and we’ve demonstrated success in this. We have closed the gap in digital documentation and developed a digital signature component to ensure clinicians, social workers and patients are all able to sign, view and share appropriately. We really are digital-first for our customers.