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Venture Capital News: PlushCare Completes $8M Series A Round

2016-11-03
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, PlushCare, the direct-to-consumer online urgent care provider, today announced the closing of its $8 million Series A financing.
GGV Capital led the round, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Exponent. GGV Capital's Managing Partner, Jeff Richards, will also join the PlushCare board. The company will use the funds to continue rapid expansion across the United States with a focus on continuing to provide the best patient and doctor experience in the telehealth industry.

'Healthcare is one of the largest markets in the world yet to be transformed by consumer-facing technology. With 2 billion smartphone users around the world, we believe that is changing,' said Jeff Richards, Managing Partner at GGV Capital. 'The urgent care market in the U.S. is over $25B annually, with more than 3 million patient visits per week. Over the next 5-10 years, a significant portion of those visits will occur via telehealth platforms, and PlushCare has the right ingredients to build the most trusted consumer brand in the industry.'

PlushCare is modernizing the urgent care model by connecting patients with same-day medical care from world-class doctors through mobile and desktop devices. Patients benefit from an improved experience -- where patients are treated as individuals, not time slots and can maintain a long-term connection with a doctor of their choosing. PlushCare Doctors -- trained at the top 50 medical schools in the U.S. -- diagnose, treat, prescribe and provide ongoing treatment throughout the course of a medical issue, with instantaneous access to cloud-based HIPAA compliant electronic medical records. The majority of cases at urgent care are treatable via telehealth, and the American Medical Association estimates that up to 70 percent of all doctor, urgent care and ER visits are either unnecessary, or could be handled safely and effectively online.

'When I worked at AT&T mHealth, we had access to a telehealth service as part of our health plan, yet nobody was taking advantage of it as the experience was poor with subpar doctors,' said Ryan McQuaid, co-founder and CEO.

'PlushCare's mission is to enable the highest quality healthcare experience for every person in the U.S., regardless of location or health insurance status. To achieve this, we run the company like a tech start-up where patient experience matters, not a health services company which can be derailed by trying to align with corporate plans to drive down costs. Customers have absolute peace of knowing that if we can't help them with their issue, we don't charge them. With 5-star Yelp ratings and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of more than 90, we're delivering on our goal to make every patient visit an impeccable experience.'

'By 2020, there will be a shortage of approximately 45,000 primary care physicians and as more patients are getting access to health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, the stress placed on the current medical system is increasing every day,' said Dr. James Wantuck MD, Chief Medical Officer and Co-founder, PlushCare. 'My physician colleagues are always looking for ways to increase time spent with patients, which is ultimately the reason they became doctors. Like their patients trust them, doctors want to work with a telehealth company that they can trust to share in their goals and decrease the non-patient workload involved with running a practice. Our doctors work on average 13 hours a week with PlushCare, with many looking to move full time. We see this trend alleviating the stress placed on the healthcare system going forward.'

PlushCare at Work with Delta Health Systems --

'As a Third Party Administrator, we helped clients install their first telehealth programs, but initially saw low utilization coupled with high network access fees, resulting in a cost-per-visit far in excess of traditional in-person visits. After reviewing all the major telehealth solutions, including Teladoc, American Well, Doctor on Demand and MDLive, we chose PlushCare. PlushCare exceeded every other provider when it came to the quality of the physician network, ease of use, patient reviews and ROI. With no network access fee, our clients are guaranteed a substantial ROI on every use. As important, our clients were impressed with being able to offer their employees access to doctors trained at top schools like Stanford and Harvard and having the opportunity to build real, ongoing relationships with the doctors.' - Jeffrey Cox, Vice President, Delta Health Systems.

About PlushCare:
PlushCare is the direct-to-consumer, online urgent care company that connects world-class doctors from the top 50 medical schools in the United States, with patients via desktop or mobile devices. The unique combination of top-notch physicians, affordable pricing, same-day and ongoing appointments with the patient's choice of provider, and personalized care structure make PlushCare the best in class platform for telehealth.

About GGV Capital:
GGV Capital is a venture capital firm founded in 2000 with the unique idea to have one team investing in both the U.S. and China. With $3.8 billion under management across eight funds, the GGV portfolio includes Airbnb, Alibaba, AlienVault, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Domo, Grab, HotelTonight, Houzz, Nimble Storage, Opendoor, Pandora Media, Percolate, Plushcare, Slack, Square, Synack, Wish, Youku Tudou, YY, Zendesk, 51credit and more. For more information: www.ggvc.com | Twitter: @GGVCapital | WeChat: GGVCapital
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