A health care provider will expand to the region after receiving an eight-figure sum in funding.
Cambridge, Mass.-based Heyday Health, a health care provider offering in-home, phone and video visits for older adults with Medicare and dual-eligible patients, announced June 24 it will expand its services to Cincinnati and Dayton after receiving $12.5 million in funding.
The funding came from multiple sources, including Gradient Ventures, Google's early-stage venture fund focused on artificial intelligence; LionBird Ventures, an Israel-based venture capital firm investing exclusively in pre-scale digital health companies; Great Oaks Capital, a startup-centric seed stage investment firm headquartered in New York; and Kate Ryder, founder and CEO of Maven Clinic, the largest virtual clinic for women's and family health.
Bobby Shady, co-founder and CEO of Heyday Health, said the company prioritized investors who supported the integration of health services and technology while seeking funding.
This expansion was driven in part by an unnamed large national payor. The payor partner identified high levels of need and demand in the region and contributed significant funding.
“We are finding, with our partner, a lot of folks who we think need us, based on the data. ... We will provide that in-home and virtual 24/7 access care model to them, as they need that extra love and care to keep them healthy and at home,” Shady told me.
Shady said Heyday Health has already hired 12 to 15 people from the region to join its patient engagement and clinical teams as part of the expansion efforts.
“We are hoping to continue growing in the region. There’s a lot of reason to believe there is going to be a great fit between Heyday and the needs on the ground. This is just the starter team in terms of building there,” Sarafina Midzik, co-founder and chief of staff of Heyday Health, said.
Heyday Health's health care services will now reach patients from the Ohio=Kentucky state borders up past Dayton and as far as 60 miles east.
“This is an opportunity to go into a bigger place than we have been and show that our model scales to these geographies as well, and we can have the same, if not greater, impact,” Shady said.
Heyday Health's hybrid health care model provides physical, behavioral and social assessments both in patients' homes and virtually. Each patient has access to a personalized care team that includes a physician, nurse practitioner and health ally. This team collaborates to create and manage individualized care plans, and provides comprehensive support in all aspects of health care, from scheduling prescription deliveries to setting up virtual appointments.
“We try to hold our patients’ hands as they navigate the complexity and frustrations and fragmentation of the health care system, and that extends to our engagement team. We want to make sure people know we are there to help,” Shady said.
Heyday Health initially began serving patients in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties in northeast Ohio in 2021. The company expanded its Ohio footprint into Summit, Stark and Portage counties in 2023 while also beginning operations in western and south central Kentucky.
Although he declined to provide the exact number of patients the company serves, Shady confirmed the number is somewhere in the thousands.
Heyday was officially established in 2020 by Shady, Midzik and chief medical officer Dr. Nupur Mehta.
