Valley-based medical communications startup BeckonCall has ceased operations, citing challenges with adapting to market changes.
BeckonCall CEO Andrew Steele announced the company closure in a Sept. 6 LinkedIn post, stating the on-call mobile message service for independent medical practices had “an incredible run” over nearly 10 years.
“We never really managed to graduate from a startup size for a number of different reasons,” Steele told the Business Journal. “But, really, it was a function of a couple of things. One, it’s just the fact that we didn't grow quickly — from a revenue perspective — to be able to continue to covering the cost to deliver the service.”
In addition, BeckonCall’s customer base decreased as a growing number of independent medical practices — its target market — were absorbed by larger health care organizations.
“So the number of potential customers that we could possibly have just kept shrinking,” Steele said.
BeckonCall was “deeply committed” to its mission of improving clinical communication among nurses, doctors and patients, which kept it going strong through tough times, Steele said in his LinkedIn post.
At its peak, the company was managing communication for tens of thousands of users a month, he added.
“We made it this far because we walked the talk. More than a few customers have been with us since day one and we’ve had ridiculously low organic churn,” Steele wrote.
Jeffrey Becker, a neurologist, launched BeckonCall in December 2015 as a software-as-a-service platform to improve on-call communication. Steele became BeckonCall’s CEO after Becker found him through networking in Phoenix, the Business Journal previously reported.
BeckonCall CEO: 'What we did had some positive impact'
The company was a past winner of the Arizona Commerce Authority’s Arizona Innovation Challenge and received a $250,000 grant. It also received $150,000 in backing from health care accelerator Jumpstart Foundry.
The company previously occupied an office in downtown Phoenix but shifted to remote work as it scaled back operations in 2018. It hasn’t employed any full-time workers for four years and contracted with a team of “on-demand” workers who helped as needed, Steele said, adding that himself and Becker primarily oversaw business operations.
Steele said he’s most proud of the company’s role in improving the quality of U.S. health care.
“We all wish that could have built a huge business and had a big exit, and sort of lived the startup dream,” he said. “But since we weren't able to do that, I think there's definitely some pride in the fact that what we did had some positive impact while we were in the market.”
BeckonCall notified its customers of its closure in advance, providing them with a little over a month to transition to another solution. The company began winding down operations last week, Steele said.
Becker will continue to practice medicine, while Steele is contemplating his next venture.
“I've had my hands in a number of different projects over the last several years," he said. "I actually ran another startup after we scaled back in 2018. At this point, my mind is open to the universe in terms of what's going to come next. I'm doing some consulting and advising work, but ultimately, we'll figure out where that leads.”
Although BeckonCall closed, there’s still a lot more to be accomplished with improving communication among nurses, physicians and patients, Steele said.
“The challenging thing about trying to create change in the health care industry is the impact of consolidation and regulatory pressures on the industry make it incredibly difficult for change to happen,” he said. “So our work was nowhere near complete. There's still a lot more to be done. Hopefully, there are going to be others that will pick up the ball from where we left it and keep moving it forward.”
