Exclusive: Matt Scantland, CoverMyMeds team launch next startup

Matt Scantland grew his new company from an idea germinating for a decade.

AndHealth, uniting the team that built CoverMyMeds with telehealth specialists, is emerging from stealth mode this week. The Columbus company has raised $57 million to speed growth of a tech-enabled approach to not just manage but reverse chronic disease by coaching behavior changes addressing primary causes.

“We could be at the tip of the spear where patients are motivated to improve their health, where the costs are substantial,” Scantland said in an exclusive interview with Columbus Business First. “To be able to deliver life-changing results – disease reversal – for conditions that matter, … if we can do that, we'll build a big company.”

Francisco Partners led the round. The San Francisco firm investing in early and growth-stage technology also was the largest outside investor in mostly bootstrapped CoverMyMeds. Also participating are Health2047 Capital Partners LLC, Kirkland & Ellis, and the extended Scantland family’s Twofold Ventures.

“We’re excited and hopeful the team can build off the early results they’ve had,” said Chris Adams, partner at Francisco. “We think this has a huge potential impact.”

Now at about 30 employees, AndHealth will about double over the year as it ramps up sales to self-funded employers, both directly and through benefits brokers. A leading brokerage, not yet disclosed, has added AndHealth to the options it offers employers.

Scantland was co-founder and CEO of CoverMyMeds, software to automate prior authorization and other vexing problems that keep patients from filling prescriptions. Ohio’s first tech unicorn was acquired in January 2017 for $1.44 billion by McKesson Corp. and kept growing in the city.

"They're outstanding, and they've done it," said Doug Given, managing partner of Health2047 Capital, a Silicon Valley firm with investors that include the American Medical Association, UnitedHealth Group and Nationwide. "They’ve reached a demonstration of potential for scale, (and) engineered an exit with great investor return."

AndHealth follows the same playbook in a parallel sport: Instead of trying to disrupt an industry, both companies strive to fix something within healthcare.

But like many health IT companies, CoverMyMeds does not care directly for patients. AndHealth does. Unlike telehealth software that acts solely as a conduit, the startup is licensed as a medical provider in several states and is working to go nationwide this year.

“We literally do become the patient's doctor,” Scantland said. “We're really working with the employers in the healthcare system to deliver a new type of healthcare in collaboration with the existing healthcare system.”

Starting with migraine, the recurrence of throbbing headaches, it’s focused on chronic conditions that patients are most motivated to solve, because they cause great pain and interfere with work and home life. They also rack up costs for employers as medical expenses, disability payments, absenteeism and lost productivity.

This year AndHealth will add treatment for certain autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s.

These conditions result from any combination of dozens of known root causes – for migraine as varied as head injury, hormonal sensitivity or food sensitivity. Patients go through a series of tests to identify their causes, and through the app have visits with a physician and health coaches to guide the patient through necessary behavioral changes. They also get supplies and medication to handle acute attacks.

“Something that used to be time-consuming, like driving, taking half a day off work to go to the doctor, we can make it super-efficient, like check your iPhone,” Scantland said.

Starting last fall, the startup enrolled 84 patients who'd had severe migraine for 15 years or more. After the three-month program, 60% no longer met the diagnostic criteria for migraine, according to preliminary data, and another 22% cut their lost work time in half. For one patient who’d had up to eight attacks per month, severity decreased by 80% – and dietary changes led him to lose weight, get his blood pressure under control and avoid a sinus surgery.

“In people with multiple chronic conditions, if you address the root causes of one diagnosis, the odds are very high that you have significantly impacted the other diagnoses as well,” Tom Blue, AndHealth senior vice president of healthcare, said in a news release.

Employers pay a flat fee per participating patient.

“We take the adoption risk,” Scantland said. “We're not paid for doing things; we're paid for achieving things.”

Scantland left CoverMyMeds at the end of 2019 and took a year off with his wife and two young sons. In the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, he led a photography expedition and conservation project on freshwater-filled underground caves called cenotes.

"What I admire about him is he patiently looked for a new opportunity," Given said.

Scouting business ideas, he started attending virtual health conferences in 2021 and met Blue, a longtime telehealth consultant who designed the AndHealth delivery system. The company also added Dr. Robert Darling, a former White House physician and telehealth entrepreneur, as medical director. Darling was founder of concierge home healthcare company Patronus Medical.

Incorporated as And Health LLC, the company launched in June, branded as one word.

In May Scantland started calling a core team of the earliest CoverMyMeds employees who rose to leadership. Joining through July were:

As Francisco portfolio companies went public or were acquired over the past two decades, only a few times has the firm backed a founder’s next venture, Adams said.

“It is rare to get the chance,” Adams said. “We were really thrilled to get the chance to do it with Matt and team.”

Scantland traces the origins of the idea to his own second chance in 2011, when his doctor challenged him to take action so he could live to raise his infant son. He changed his diet, started running and meditating, and lost 50 pounds. That’s also when CoverMyMeds hit exponential growth.

“For me, this is why this is my new business,” he said. “It's a chance to do my favorite thing, which is building companies, and a chance to help patients to participate in healthcare, which I think is essential. It's made my life dramatically richer.”