Carbon Health wants to do for healthcare what Starbucks did for coffee. The San Francisco startup wants to provide a shot in the arm to customers everywhere.
On Monday, Carbon Health raised $28 million toward that aim, with plans to use the funds to expand its telemedicine services across the United States. The company currently offers virtual urgent, primary, pediatric and orthopedic care, as well as mental-health services, in 16 states. Since the coronavirus outbreak began, patient use of Carbon Health’s online clinic services has increased tenfold. By summer, CEO Eren Bali said the company is aiming to provide virtual, low-cost doctor visits to anyone across the U.S.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the importance of not only high-quality care, but highly affordable care,” Bali wrote in an email to Built In. “Unemployment rates will lead to people increasingly losing health insurance. We must scale so that more people can access our services.”
Increasing access to its virtual doctors visits will require an increase in staff. Carbon Health hopes to hire approximately 1,000 new staff members by the end of the year, with a focus on designers, marketing and operations reps. Over the past two months, Carbon Health has already tripled its team to 300 to help support its coronavirus response.
The company has partnered with the city of San Francisco and county of Los Angeles to test more than 12,000 people in its brick-and-mortar and mobile clinics. More than 14,000 people have used Carbon Health’s new online coronavirus assessment tool, which helps patients understand their risk and chances of contracting the virus. And the startup has also created a task force that consults businesses on how to safely reopen.
The company continues to develop its at-home coronavirus test kit, which it had been distributing before the Food and Drug Administration announced self sample collections were not covered by the government’s emergency use authorization.
Bali said the new tests are coming soon, and that Carbon Health is working with others interested in the initiative. The FDA recently greenlit Carbon Health’s lab partner, Curative Labs, to process at-home tests. Home collection kits cost more to produce, and will cost more for consumers to use, than traditional forms of testing, Bali said.
“We are doing this as an investment in our community,” he said. “Reimbursement is going to be an open question, and will have to catch up with cost.”
The fresh round of funding brings investment in the startup to $75 million. Existing investor DCVC led the round.
