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Teladoc, Chappell Roan, and Healthcare’s DeepSeek Moment
February 6, 2025
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Together with
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“Record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection. Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”
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Chappell Roan putting healthcare in the spotlight with her Grammys acceptance speech.
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Teladoc is looking to catapult over some of its recent obstacles with its first acquisition under CEO Chuck Divita, picking up Catapult Health for a lofty $65M.
The closing price is over three times what Teladoc shelled out for BetterHelp in 2015, which could be justified if Catapult’s at-home testing synergies pan out as intended.
Catapult offers an at-home wellness exam called VirtualCheckup, giving members a diagnostic kit to collect blood samples, check their blood pressure, and screen for mental health conditions like depression or anxiety.
- From there, members have a virtual visit with a licensed nurse practitioner to discuss their test results, review top health risks, and develop an individual health action plan.
- If VirtualCheckup turns up anything that requires more intensive care, Catapult can now directly enroll eligible members into Teladoc’s chronic condition management programs or refer them to its virtual therapists and primary care providers.
Teladoc hinted that growing membership for its integrated care segment was a top priority during last month’s JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, with BetterHelp’s rising ad costs and dwindling user base prompting a change of course.
- It was also reported that Teladoc will be a central component of Amazon’s efforts to move deeper into healthcare by allowing its customers to access chronic care programs for diabetes, hypertension, and weight management.
- Revenue for Teladoc’s integrated care segment was up 2% year-over-year as of its Q3 earnings call in September, compared to a 10% dropoff for BetterHelp to $257M.
An immaculate M&A track record isn’t something that Teladoc has going for it. When it acquired Livongo at the height of the pandemic for $18.5B, the companies boasted a combined value of $37B.
- A few billions in write-offs later, Teladoc’s market cap now stands below $2B, but lessons learned from past experiences could set the Catapult integration up for more success.
At-home testing has historically been a significant limitation for many virtual care players, so Catapult could help Teladoc distance itself from the competition with an integrated platform that can tackle both.
The Takeaway
Teladoc is shifting its focus to chronic condition management with the acquisition of Catapult, and adding at-home testing to its diabetes and hypertension programs should be good news for their position in the market (assuming the integration avoids some past missteps).
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The First 30 Days: What to Expect With AI
Implementing AI documentation tools promises significant benefits, but how do you ensure a smooth transition? Playback Health has you covered with this comprehensive 30-day roadmap outlining what to expect, industry best practices, and its own proven implementation approach.
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Bridging Care Gaps for Underserved Populations
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- Who Will Be Healthcare’s DeepSeek? A stellar thinkpiece from Dr. Ben Schwartz at the Surgeon’s Record explored whether the healthcare industry is due for its own “DeepSeek moment” like the one that shook the AI world last week. The article lays out how DeepSeek’s playbook of transparency and consumerization could potentially be used by smaller players to reimagine care delivery from first principles, and compete where entrenched incumbents can’t: experience, outcomes, and costs.
- KFF’s Medicaid Trends to Watch: KFF shared its key Medicaid moves to watch out for at the start of the second Trump administration. House Republicans are reportedly considering $2.3 trillion in Medicaid cuts from policy changes that include imposing a per capita cap on federal Medicaid support and establishing new Medicaid work requirements. We could also see final rules overturned on everything from nursing facility staffing and wages for long-term care workers to price transparency.
- Medsender Lands $5M: Up-and-coming healthcare operations startup Medsender landed $5M in Series A funding as it looks to accelerate its product pipeline of AI referral management and contact center solutions. Medsender’s platform synchronizes data from unstructured sources like fax, email, and phone conversations to automate administrative workflows and patient communications. Its “human-like” phone agent MAIRA reportedly reduces call handling by up to 80%.
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- NY Times Article Scans AI Use: An opinion article in the New York Times generated buzz over the best use of AI to support doctors. Eric Topol, MD, and Pranav Rajpurkar, PhD, noted recent studies in which AI outperformed physicians for interpreting images, but radiologists still favored their own judgment over AI. That led them to suggest three models for AI deployment, the most drastic of which was having AI independently handle routine tasks like chest X-rays or mammograms while physicians focused exclusively on complex cases.
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Join Leading CMIOs for Strategies to Maximize AI
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The State of Payer Enrollment & Credentialing
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