Aledade Inc. is hitting the gas on its national expansion, with plans to hire hundreds of new workers and open offices in multiple markets to support its growth.
The Bethesda company — which helps independent physician practices implement care models that compensate them based on health results, rather than just fees for services rendered — said Monday it will initially open offices in New York, San Francisco and Durham, North Carolina, to go along with its local headquarters and the Austin, Texas, office it inherited when it acquired Iris Healthcare in January.
The New York and San Francisco offices will support Aledade’s regional teams overseeing the company's expansion in key markets. The Durham office is set to become the new headquarters for Aledade Care Solutions, a unit formed to support its network of accountable care organizations, or ACOs. The subsidiary, which creates and runs programs that aims to cut costs and improve outcomes for patients, is led by Dr. Mandy Cohen, former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, who became its CEO in March.
Aledade has already added hundreds of employees this year and is planning to hire at least 300 more by year’s end.
Ultimately, the new markets represent “high-growth regions” that will give Aledade more than 1,000 employees in “hubs where they can gather in person to connect, collaborate and innovate,” President Mat Kendall said in a statement.
While the company will maintain a “remote-friendly, flexible work culture,” its new workspaces will “support our distributed workforce across the country,” according to Reena Samantaray, Aledade’s vice president of business strategy.
It's all part of the fast-growing startup's growth plan just a few weeks after it closed a $123 million Series E funding round. The additional funds will help Aledade reach more of the Medicare Advantage senior population in particular by growing partnerships with health plans, building more ACOs for physician practices and health clinics, and expanding Aledade Care Solutions.
That raise brought Aledade’s valuation to about $3.1 billion; the firm had previously raised about $300 million in its lifetime, including $100 million in January 2021, $64 million in April 2020 and $56 million in 2019.
It also made the business “extremely well-positioned in this market environment to accelerate our work to meet patients where they are, especially in Medicare Advantage, and seize new opportunities to expand wraparound patient care services,” Dr. Farzad Mostashari, Aledade’s co-founder and CEO, said earlier this month.
Covid-19 has further challenged physician offices to function independently and forced many to consolidate to stay afloat. The pandemic separately underscored the need to move away from the fee-for-service model to value-based care, which focuses on keeping patients healthy and out of the hospital, and cutting medical costs.
When Aledade teams up with an independent physician practice to create an ACO, it provides support to those doctors, pays the insurance company if costs go up and earns a portion of the payment if costs go down — generating revenue when the practice keeps its patients healthy.
The 8-year-old business has more than 140 value-based care contracts, covering 1.7 million patients and $17 billion in health care spending, according to Aledade. It has a network of more than 1,000 primary care practices comprising 11,000 doctors across 36 states and the District.
It reported $300 million in revenue in 2021, up from $185 million in 2020, its first year of profitability.
