We've all been there. You wake up one morning feeling ill and know something doesn't feel right.
You'll probably jump on WebMD in an attempt to self-diagnose before the split-second decision of whether a trip to urgent care, the ER or your primary care's office is necessary.
Maybe you show up at urgent care only to be told you're dehydrated and could've solved your problems with a couple glasses of water. You leave with a lighter wallet and a bruised ego.
Denver's CirrusMD wants to help you avoid unneeded trips for medical care, offering a mobile solution that lets you text your doctors your symptoms, snap a picture or two, and in real time, get a prescription and be on your way.
CirrusMD announced that it has raised $15 million in a Series B round of funding led by Drive Capital and Colorado Impact Fund, bringing total funding to-date to $26 million.
In addition to the funding announcement, the company also announced a new contract with Iron Bow Technologies, a subcontractor to the United States Department of Veteran Affairs, that will provide improved care access and delivery for the country's veterans.
"Real-time communication between a doctor and patient not only improves outcomes but is expected in healthcare today. This latest round of funding enables us to bring seamless, chat-based virtual care to more people," said Andrew Altorfer, CEO and co-founder of CirrusMD. "CirrusMD is leading the market in delivering instant, secure texting with board-certified physicians across all 50 states. We're turning the antiquated, brick-and-mortar approach to care on its head. By optimizing member engagement and providing care where and when it's needed, we can reduce out of control healthcare costs and deliver better patient care."
The company, which started in 2012, has about 40 employees spread across its Denver headquarters and offices in California, Texas and Georgia. With the recent funding, Altorfer said he expects to double the company's employee headcount in the next year, with a focus on the Denver HQ.
"We are growing our team in all functional areas, including expansion of our physician network and branching into new specialties and use cases. We’re also growing our engineering, marketing, sales and account management teams to innovate faster and better support our customers. Given that we work with very large customers, we want to be strategic in how we’re investing in key roles like account management," he wrote in an email to Colorado Inno.
The company's service works like this: using your primary health insurance caregiver’s app, you can use CirrusMD’s HIPAA-compliant chat service to message a doctor.
Via the app, you can snap a picture of your throat, describe a rash or turn on video chat for a couple minutes so a doctor can see if you have concussion-like symptoms.
The doctors, either staffed by CirrusMD or the insurance company themselves, are dedicated to the app like they would be committed to a shift in an emergency room. Because of this, CirrusMD doctors answer in an average time of under a minute, and alternate between patients depending on severity of cases.
The model has caught on, and so far in 2019, the company has seen a 141 percent increase in Q1 patient encounters year-over-year.
The partnership with Iron Bow is the next big move for CirrusMD, offering veterans access to communication with VA health care team members via a mobile or web application. The initial rollout will be available for more than 200,000 patients across three of the VA's medical centers.
