Monogram Health’s latest capital raise is one for the record books.
The Nashville-based kidney disease management startup has closed a $375 million round of funding, according to a news release, with investments from CVS Health, Cigna Ventures, Humana, Memorial Hermann Health System and SCAN.
Existing investors Frist Cressey Ventures, TPG Capital, Heritage Group, Pure Vida Investments and Northwest Venture Partners also participated in the round.
The $375 million investment is massive for a Middle Tennessee-based startup, even one operating in the region’s $92 billion health care industry. Only one area company — Silicon Ranch — has recorded a larger raise in the last five years, although the solar panel company has done it twice: $838.39 million in 2021 and $600 million last week. Monogram had another large raise in 2021, securing $160 million in funding.
Founded in January 2019 by CEO Michael Uchrin and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Monogram works with health insurance plans, such as Humana Medicare Advantage and Commercial, to care for chronic kidney disease patients inside their homes. Depending on the stage of the patient’s disease, Monogram works to either stabilize a patient’s disease progression, prepare the patient for dialysis or transplant or improve treatment results for patients already on dialysis.
"There are several distinctive attributes which set Monogram apart and enable the impactful and attentive care they demonstrate with their patients. Foundational to our mission, and Monogram's most key distinctive aspect, is the in-home care delivery model," Frist, Monogram’s board chair and partner with Frist Cressey Ventures, said in an emailed statement to the NBJ. "A 'home-first' mission creates a nationwide shift whereby care comes to the patient’s front door, as opposed to the patient carrying the weighty responsibility of finding the care outside their home. Built upon its home-first mission is its nationally scaled, value-based specialty and primary care provider platform, which utilizes our proprietary evidence-based clinical criteria, driving our polychronic care model. Lastly, Monogram also leverage a nationwide managed service organization, all the while, and this is important, staying dialysis provider agnostic."
Monogram’s latest raise will be used to continue the company’s expansion, according to the release. The startup's footprint has grown from 20 states at the beginning of last year to nearly 4,000 cities across 34 states today.
With Monogram’s new strategic investors, the company’s investor base now covers 30% of Medicare Advantage members in the U.S. and approximately 40% of the country’s population, according to the release.
“At Monogram Health we actively manage patients’ kidney disease and a wide range of acute and chronic conditions using our proprietary, evidence-based protocols and technology,” Uchrin said in the release. “Everything we do is designed to improve access to health care and health outcomes for polychronic patients by supporting their individual needs in their own homes, transforming the patient experience, especially for those who have been historically underserved.”
