Stealth startup The Wound Company has launched operations after securing $4.25 million in seed funds from Susa Ventures and Sozo Ventures.

The new company’s eyes are now fixed on expansion and hiring talent. Among its goals is to build partnerships with health plans as well as other health care providers, including home health and hospice organizations.

“Hospice patient volumes are growing to about 2 million per year. And there are more wounded hospice patients than ever before, thanks to all of the underlying metabolic diseases and issues,” Nima Ahmadi, founder and CEO of The Wound Company, told Hospice News. “And in the hospice segment, there’s even less certified wound care expertise because the goals are palliative. And yet these patients are suffering from wounds that are odorous, with uncontrolled drainage, there’s extreme pain during and between dressing changes that really affect the patient’s experience at the end of life and affects the caretakers.”

The Wound Company uses predictive analytics and multi-channel communications to identify patients with wound care needs and ensure service delivery.

Their tech platform connects patients and providers to wound and ostomy experts virtually or through in-person visits. The platform also offers clinical reporting, customer data integration, and workflow automation to make care delivery as painless as possible for providers.

Of key concern is minimizing the risk of amputation due to diabetic foot ulcers or other wounds. About 50% of lower extremity amputations would be preventable if patients with type 2 diabetes and foot ulcers had received better care, researchers have found.

The Wound Company began forming partnerships while in stealth mode with health plans, health systems, home care providers, hospice providers, and patients.

“Our home care and hospice partners pay us a fixed fee for our involvement on a per-patient basis, which is correlated to the value that we’re delivering to them and cost savings on supplies and unnecessary visits and the improvements in care that we are enabling,” Ahmadi said. “That is a standalone business segment for us that we are focused on commercially. We also have a business working with Medicare Advantage and Medicaid plans directly. Those patients may or may not have home care, but we are involved as the quarterback and manager of the patient’s wound care and delivering that care directly on behalf of the health plan.”

The company reported that within these early partnerships, it recognized a potential 15% to 20% reduction in the total cost of care for wound and ostomy patients and up to 50% savings on supplies for home health and hospice patients.

Current partners include several small. mid-sized and national home health and hospice providers, according to Ahmadi.

“[Wound care] is a massive, massive section of our health care industry that hasn’t seen innovation, and the investors really felt that — especially with our aging population, higher levels of metabolic disease, more care shifting into the home care setting — this was a moment to reinvent wound care completely,” Ahmadi said.

Home Health Care News Editor Andrew Donlan contributed to this report.