K Health CEO Allon Bloch

Startups

K Health Closes $50M to Bring AI to Primary Care

Momentum begets momentum, and K Health is building on the recent debut of its AI Knowledge Agent with the close of $50M in equity funding led by Claure Group.

K Health is on a mission to provide access to high-quality medical care at scale by using AI to turn patient smartphones into the first stop along their care journey.

• K’s clinical-grade AI for primary care takes patients through a personalized chat to walk through their symptoms, develops an assessment grounded in the EHR, then delivers insights to providers to inform their diagnoses and treatments.

• This allows providers to practice at the top of their license and engage with their patients instead of spending valuable time manually piecing together relevant information.

We unpacked K’s AI Knowledge Agent when it was first unveiled, but the short-and-sweet version is that it’s composed of an array of LLMs enhanced by K’s own algorithms, with a few key differentiators from today’s standard AI applications:

• It incorporates the patient’s medical history to provide highly tailored responses, enabling a higher level of personalization than standalone models.

• It’s optimized for accuracy by using curated sources, then leverages multiple specialized agents to verify the answer matches the sources and the EHR data is appropriate.

A core component of K’s blueprint is partnering with health systems to serve as an entry point to their larger care ecosystem, and Cedars-Sinai has been helping co-develop a longitudinal care program that integrates virtual care with in-person services.

• By combining K’s AI with the patient’s EHR and Cedars-Sinai’s brick-and-mortar assets, patients can be intelligently routed to the right place to resolve their needs, reaching everything from primary care and specialists to labs and tests within the same interface.

K’s competitive advantage is its ability to do more with less. An AI-led model that eliminates the need to build clinics allows K to achieve better outcomes at lower costs than traditional primary care, and profitability looks like it’s in the forecast for next year.

• The fresh funds will be used to fuel more health system partnerships and continue sharpening K’s AI, which should in turn allow it to keep improving the unit economics that separate it from the likes of Walmart Health (RIP) and VillageMD.

The Takeaway

Primary care is the gateway to the healthcare system, but that gateway is rusting away from the demands of an aging population and a shortage of providers. K Health is setting out to prove that AI can repair the situation, and it now has $50M to help it make its case.

Bolster Your Workforce With W2 Classification

As we navigate the biggest nursing workforce shortage of our time, understanding the nuances of clinician classification and protecting your community from risk is more important than ever. Even for the most flexible schedules, assigning 1099 status to nurses could be leaving your organization vulnerable to lawsuits. Find out how connectRN’s W2 staffing solution protects you and your business from liability.

Measure What Matters For GLP-1 Treatment

Better GLP-1 treatments start with better metrics. Learn how daily remote monitoring of key metrics like weight, BMI, body composition, and blood pressure empowers care teams to make more informed GLP-1 treatment decisions.

The State of Payor Enrollment and Credentialing

We’re on the brink of a new era in healthcare. From AI-enabled chatbots to GenAI, Medallion’s latest report sheds light on how healthcare organizations are prioritizing automation, actively shaping their future with it, and hoping it can live up to its promise. Get the full report here.

The Wire

• Q1 Funding Update: PitchBook’s latest investment update counted 77 digital health funding rounds totaling $1.1B during Q1, in line with activity for the previous quarter. Despite the steady barrage of fundraising announcements, PitchBook said that valuations have been taking a hit “in the range of 20% to 40%” compared to previous rounds, and warned that the choppy performance of recent IPOs could start causing companies to reconsider a public exit. Since hitting the NASDAQ less than a month ago, Tempus AI’s valuation has been nearly slashed in half from $8.1B to ~$5B.

• Hummingbird Series A: Tech-enabled managed services startup Hummingbird Healthcare nabbed $10M of Series A nectar to address persistent barriers to patient access. Hummingbird helps clients standardize primary care and specialty patient access services into integrated contact centers and optimize Epic for patient self-service. Colorado-based UCHealth led the round after Hummingbird successfully overhauled its patient access operations.

• Responsible AI Framework: The CHAI coalition of tech titans and major hospitals published a draft framework on the responsible development of healthcare AI. The 187-page document lays out how institutions should think about AI fairness, transparency, and safety in an effort to supplement the FDA’s less-than-comprehensive guidance on the same issues. CHAI is currently working with federal officials to set up a network of assurance labs to vet and monitor AI solutions, with 30 labs already on pace to begin evaluating models using the new framework later this year.

• Volatile Performance: Median hospital margins increased to 5% year-to-date in May, but were down nearly 1% from April, with Strata Decision’s Monthly Healthcare Industry Financial Benchmarks highlighting a concerning amount of instability in monthly performance. Data from 1,600+ US hospitals showed revenue trending in a positive direction for both inpatient (up 6.7% year-over-year) and outpatient settings (+8%), although margins continued to be weighed down by mounting expenses for drugs (+8.3%), supplies (+8.1%), and labor (+4.4%).

• DOJ Fraud Crackdown: A two-week operation spearheaded by the DOJ and FBI culminated in the arrest of 193 individuals for their participation in healthcare frauds causing over $1.6B in losses. The 145 separate cases were headlined by a massive scheme involving four defendants that allegedly targeted Medicare patients with amniotic grafts for superficial wounds, which apparently led to the defendants receiving a mindblowing $600M from Medicare within a 16-month window.

• Hospital Mergers Tied to Local Layoffs: An NBER analysis of 304 hospital mergers between 2010 and 2015 linked post-merger price increases to layoffs at local non-healthcare employers due to higher premiums. The average merger led to a 1.2% price increase over two years, with every 1% uptick tied to a 0.4% reduction in employee headcount. The study went on to connect the job loss to a 2.7% bump in deaths from suicide and drug overdose, a notion that the AHA deemed “unconscionable” given the lengths hospitals go to on a daily basis to serve patients at risk of taking their own life. 

• eVisit Acquires Inpatient Teleconsult Tech: Virtual care enabler eVisit announced the acquisition of UPMC’s inpatient teleconsult technology alongside new investments from UPMC and MedStar Health to pile on its recent $45M Series B raise. The teleconsult tech allows virtual specialists to consult with bedside clinicians about inpatient care across five services (stroke, neurology, critical care, psychology, toxicology), and the 40k consults it’s facilitated since the start of the pandemic have reportedly resulted in a 92% decrease in wait times. 

• Health Coverage Projections: The CBO estimates that the percentage of Americans without health coverage is going to steadily rise to 9.2% by 2028, up from 7.2% at the end of last year. The biggest drivers behind the projected decline are expected to be the surge in immigration that began in 2022 and the expiration of enhanced subsidies available through ACA exchanges in 2025. The CBO anticipates subsidized exchange membership to plummet from 21M in 2025 to just 16M by 2026.

• Laudio + Children’s National: Children’s National Hospital is expanding its partnership with Laudio to bring its nurse educators onto the workforce management platform. The Laudio platform centralizes frontline leaders’ core workflows and automates tasks like employee rounding, new hire check-ins, quality audits, and overtime assessments. It also helps foster meaningful team engagement with AI-driven recommendations and reminders for events such as employee birthdays and work anniversaries.

• Investing in Geriatrics: The Biden administration announced a $206M investment to train primary care clinicians to better serve elderly patients. The Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program split the funds among 42 academic institutions, while carving out a portion to teach family members and community caregivers how to support their loved ones with Alzheimer’s and other dementias. The US is on track to face a shortage of nearly 30k geriatricians by 2025, and the new program is designed to help PCPs pick up the slack with specialized training.

• MA Margins on the Rise: The Medicare Advantage market generated the largest average gross margins per enrollee last year, despite reports of higher-than-expected utilization from several major payors. A KFF analysis found that gross margins for MA plans climbed from $1,425 to $1,982 per enrollee since 2015, and now dwarf the margins seen in the individual market ($1,048), group market ($910), and Medicaid Managed Care ($753). Gross margins measure the premium collected per enrollee minus the cost of their healthcare, but don’t account for things like admin expenses or tax liabilities.

7 Strategies for Effective Ambient AI Pilots

Implementing new technologies is like navigating a ship through uncharted waters – it requires a steady hand and a good map. Over the past 18 months, Nabla has been piloted in over 80 organizations and compiled a list of strategies to help you chart a path to a successful ambient AI deployment. Explore Nabla’s 7 strategies for effective ambient AI pilots.

Bridging Care Gaps for Underserved Populations

Is your health system, rural health clinic, or federally qualified health center struggling to reach patients with obstacles to receiving in-person care? This Clear Arch Health whitepaper explores how combining RPM with VBC can help facilitate proactive interventions, address social determinants of health, and get the most out of new CMS reimbursement pathways.

Patient-Centered Design for Diabetes Care

Glooko’s recently overhauled Mobile App makes it easier than ever for diabetes patients to organize, log, visualize, and share their data. Head over to this conversation with Glooko’s product and design team for a behind-the-scenes look at how patient-centered design is improving diabetes outcomes.