Iora Health picks up $28M to take the sting out of primary care

Like its West Coast cohort One Medical, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Iora Health is trying to take some of the age-old hassle out of primary care, and it’s raised $28 million in new funding to do this.

Iora’s system uses telemedicine platforms to reach remote patients. It also reduces wait times for office visits. The end result of these things, it believes, is a better patient experience, better clinical outcomes, and a reduction in overall health care costs.

At the center of the Iora model is a homegrown collaborative-care technology platform which enables care teams to better reach whole patient populations — wellness and outreach tools are built in to the system. These patient populations come from employers, Medicare Advantage insurance plans, commercial insurance plans, and Taft Hartley Trust funds.

The company operates 11 primary care clinics and is poised to open many more. In fact it wants to double in size in 2015.

The startup has some well-monied believers. New investors include Foundation Medical Partners, Rice Management Company, GE Ventures, and Khosla Ventures, with existing investors .406 Ventures, Fidelity Biosciences, and Polaris Partners also throwing in.

In the last four years, Iora Health has grown from a startup with an idea of how to improve health care to serving and improving the lives of thousands of patients across the U.S.,” says CEO and cofounder Rushika Fernandopulle, M.D. in a statement. “We are excited to grow with this round to continue to deliver on our mission to restore humanity to health care.”