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About our project
The problem we solve: Healthcare organizations-payers, hospitals, providers, plans-are increasingly rewarded for good performance and penalized for bad. In order to reduce costs while improving quality and patient engagement and increasing revenues, they must get good information from where patients spend the majority of their time, the home. eCaring creates meaningful, impactful connections between insurers, plans, providers and agencies to their patients.
About our solution:
eCaring is a technology enabled platform that closes the loop connecting patients at home to healthcare organizations and families. eCaring generates actionable real time healthcare information from the home. Its intuitive system enables home health aides, caregivers and patients, regardless of their computer skills or language literacy, to enter comprehensive behavioral, clinical, medication adherence and compliance data. Algorithms filter the data to generate alerts that enable care managers to keep emerging problems in the home from leading to the hospital, and to establish higher levels of patient communications and engagement.
Progress to
date:
For chronic and post-acute patients, eCaring has reduced hospital and emergency visits by 30-40%; lowered readmissions post discharge by 35%; reduced total costs of care by $4,000 annually; and enabled people to live longer healthier lives where they most want to be, their home. In these programs, eCaring has trained over 1500 health care workers, and over 300 care managers. We have worked with many types of organizations, such as: Beth Israel Medical Center; Premiere Home Health Agency; PACE University; BestCare Home Health Agency; LifeStyle Options, Inc.; Jewish Home Lifecare; Empire BlueCross BlueShield; and others. eCaring was honored for Corporate Contribution to Urban Health by The New York Academy of Medicine.
About Our Team
Creator: Robert Herzog
Education: Williams College
Bio: “My mother worked until she was 79 years old. She had a few good retirement years but when her health declined my family’s lives went into a tailspin. There were constant hospital visits, home assessments, agencies, visiting nurses, Medicare, rehab, insurance claims: a real catastrophe. Even through all of this suffering, my family constantly felt one step behind the situation. I learned that what you don't know can truly hurt you. That's why I got involved in healthcare, to make it better and easier to help keep your loved ones in their home.”
Robert M. Herzog is a pioneer in applying new media and technologies to develop companies and solutions for critical problems in healthcare, media, Internet utilization, technology, energy and the environment. He has an extensive background in digital media and creative enterprises as an entrepreneur and executive. His experience includes work with startup companies such as Motionbox, Diva, ON2 Corp, Softcom, Granite Films and City Winery, as well as major corporations including JPMorgan Chase, Cahners Communications and the Sarnoff Research Center, not-for-profits including New Jersey Appleseed and Ecotrust, and public service as Director of the NYC Energy Office. He is also a novelist and filmmaker. He graduated from Williams College and received his MA from the New School.
Title: CEO
Advanced Degree(s): MA Policy Analysis, The New School
About Team Members
Pamela Hall
Chief Operations Officer, BA Parsons Biography: As Chief Operating Officer (COO), Pamela brings over 15 years management and operational experience driving success for industry leading organizations and building innovative brands. Prior to joining eCaring, Pamela was Co-Founder and COO of United Preference, a leading health & wellness incentive administration & data analytics platform provider, where she partnered with Discover® Financial Services and had clients that included some of the largest health plans in America. Pamela previously served as COO of EGOEAST Inc., a leading New York-based business development and market strategy consulting firm, working clients in healthcare, financial services, and information technology. She guided the launch over 30 companies, and drove 11 major exits and 2 IPOs. Pamela co-produced the 2011 Healthcare Payments & Policy Conference in Washington, DC. and her team launched the first ever General Purpose Prepaid Card with hip hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons – the Prepaid Visa RushCard — and grew the business from $0 to over $2 billion in deposits in three years.
Title: Chief Operations Officer Advanced Degree(s): BA Parsons LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamela-hall-9a80a145/
Victor Duran
Director of Marketing, BFA; Certified Digital Marketing Biography: Having 15+ years of healthcare marketing experience working for the largest municipal health care organization in the country, NYC Health + Hospitals, Victor specializes in creative and digital marketing, branding, digital customer-facing signage, print collateral, event planning, web design and digital photography and video.
Title: Director of Marketing Advanced Degree(s): BFA; Certified Digital Marketing LinkedIn:http://www.linkedin.com/in/creativic
Stuart Hunt
Chief Technology Officer, BA, Williams College; MA, NYU ITP Biography: Stuart has been on the cutting edge of digital development, having created some of the industry’s leading web presences, as well as award-winning DVDs. His areas of expertise include interactive media development, network management, and database design and administration, and he has worked for companies including Reuters Health; the NBA; ABC News; The Smithsonian (award winning CD- ROM); Sotheby’s Auction House; IBM; AT&T; OnHealth.com; Pfizer; NYU’s Stern School of Business, the Internet Shopping Network; Scholastic; and numerous others. Stuart graduated from Williams College, and has a Masters from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Title: Chief Technology Officer Advanced Degree(s): BA, Williams College; MA, NYU ITP
Josh Grotstein
CFO, BA, Brown; MBA, Harvard Biography: Josh is an early and growth stage technology company expert, having served in numerous roles across many aspects of the technology company value chain: from senior executive to entrepreneurial CEO and COO, to institutional investor and angel. Previously, Josh was CEO of Motionbox, an online personal video company, which was acquired by Hewlett Packard; he was co- founder and managing partner of SAS Investors, a $40M seed stage venture capital fund which invested in core technology companies emerging from top labs and academic research centers. Prior to his recent life working with start-up’s, he held senior executive roles at Citigroup (Division Executive in charge of global Internet Banking and eCommerce programs), NBC Digital (Founder and General Manager), Prodigy (SVP Content and Commerce); CNBC (led business development and affiliate marketing); J. Walter Thompson (where he worked on Warner-Lambert and Kodak Healthcare businesses, among others); and McKinsey. Josh has served on over a dozen Boards, including American Medical Television, a joint venture between the AMA and NBC; and currently serves on the Boards of NYC Seed, an early-stage venture fund and the Utah-based education technology non-profit, Shift.. He is an active angel investor and he is an advisor to several early-stage media and technology companies. He is a graduate of Brown University (magna cum laude and phi beta kappa) and the Harvard Business School.
Title: CFO Advanced Degree(s): BA, Brown; MBA, Harvard LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-grotstein-7273a/
About Our Company
eCaring, Inc.
Location: 114 East 25th Street 501 New York, NY 10001
We keep patients out of the hospital or nursing home, with all the terrible burdens and costs associated with such use. Our real time information generated from the home enables timely interventions that keep small problems in the home for escalating to big ones ending up in the hospital Care managers can focus more on patients in immediate need of attention, rather than only learning about serious problems after they can do something to help prevent them, promoting better patient care and enhancing the patient experience. We enable patients to connect better with their caregivers, providers and families, fostering peace of mind while contributing to better overall health.
How We Help Physicians
It simply is not possible to provide genuine comprehensive care management without getting meaningful information from where the patient spends the overwhelming majority of the time, and the place they most want to be, the home. By providing this information, eCaring not only enhances the real quality of care physicians and providers can offer, but also enables them to optimize their participation in alternative payment models that reward them for good performance, through sharing cost savings and/or increasing revenues based on higher quality ratings. From pre-visit to concurrent care to post visit or discharge, eCaring provides an ongoing, real time, patient-customizable database that enhances assessments, optimizes treatment and generates stronger revenues. In the process, physicians and providers can strengthen their relationships with their patients, reducing turnover and enhancing the patient experiences.
How We Help Hospitals
Hospitals are increasingly being forced to deal with patient outcomes beyond the four walls of the hospital, but many are ill-equipped to manage such programs. eCaring enables hospitals to reduce their readmission rates, for which they can be substantially penalized. It can reduce the total costs of an episode, which hospitals are exposed to under bundled payments. To the extent hospitals are involved in home and community based programs and care initiatives, eCaring can help them achieve population health goals, such as in DSRIP programs. By preventing avoidable hospital visits and readmissions, eCaring enables hospitals to focus their resources on those who most need them, making the most productive use of their beds and staff. Enhancing the patient experience also enables hospitals to maintain solid relationships with their patients for future service provision.
Challenge Mission
Key Milestones Achieved and Planned
For chronic and post-acute patients, eCaring has reduced hospital and emergency visits by 30-40%; lowered readmissions post discharge by 35%; reduced total costs of care by $4,000 annually; and enabled people to live longer healthier lives where they most want to be, their home. In these programs, eCaring has trained over 1500 health care workers, and over 300 care managers. We have worked with many types of organizations, such as: Beth Israel Medical Center; Premiere Home Health Agency; PACE University; BestCare Home Health Agency; LifeStyle Options, Inc.; Jewish Home Lifecare; Empire BlueCross BlueShield; and others. eCaring was honored for Corporate Contribution to Urban Health by The New York Academy of Medicine.
Our Competitive Advantages
There are three types of competitors claiming to involve the home in healthcare. The first is remote patient monitoring systems, such as electronic or Bluetooth connected scales, blood pressure cuffs, glucometers, etc. This can be good data, but in and of itself provides no context for what is going on with a patient, and has not proven very effective in impact. Similarly, sensors which track movement in the home have had limited success. eCaring can in fact integrate these peripherals with its system, to be the hub of the connected home. There are also text based apps which provide check lists for performing basic tasks by home care workers. These are used primarily for payment and reimbursement purposes, and have no capacity for generating comprehensive real time healthcare information that can generate alerts for improving care treatment and quality in the home.
Barriers to Entry
There is a growing focus on collecting and utilizing healthcare information from non-institutional settings. Most entrants in the field rely on either cumbersome self-reported data with high drop off rates, or limited data that collected through telemonitoring systems. No other system collects the depth of information collected by eCaring as easily and intuitively, nor do they provide for the essential communications among all parties, including family members, that are crucial for being able to identify and rapidly respond to problems before the escalate.
Traction, Funding and Partners
We have raised funds from VCs, high net worth individuals and strategic partners, and are currently raising $1.2 million for further development, with $600,000 already committed, with Ascent Biomedical Ventures as the lead.
Innovation Details
Intellectual Property Summary
Patent pending for system of using icons to record and respond to healthcare information generated from the home. Most icons have been copyrighted.
Patent Link
Copyrights: eCaring Computer Program (registration # TXu1 - 151-451) Screenshots eCaring Program (registration # VAu608-838) CareTracker Icons Collection (registration # VA 1-893-510) Vitals Icons Collection (registration # VA-1-924-937. Owns pending U.S. Patent Application No. 12/016864
Clinical Information
Numerous programs have demonstrated the success of using that system to help chronic and post-acute patients reduce their utilization of hospitals and the ER, by up to 30--40%, saving $3,000-$6,000 per member per month in care costs annually, as can be found at http://ecaring.com/category/newsandresearch/case-studies/.
Based on those successes, we wanted to bring the benefits of communicating real time impactful healthcare information to the millions of families with aging members who want to stay in the comfort and dignity of their homes as long as possible, with a simple, easy-to-use adaptable system.
Regulatory Status
No FDA clearance is required for the use of the eCaring system.
How we will use the funds raised
eCaring will use these funds to expand our client base regionally and nationally, and develop strategic partnerships for obtaining clients and providing related services. They will help further establish eCaring as the brand for home health care information and communication, as we build a full suite of products to help families, caregivers and health care organizations at all stages of their care journey. For example, we will use funds to finalize the launch of the smartphone version of our app, a low cost means for families and care organizations to get the unique benefits of using eCaring.
Thank You
I’m Robert Herzog, founder and CEO of eCaring, a proven system to help the elderly and chronically ill stay in their homes and out of the hospital. I wasn't originally a healthcare "person." My background was more technology and media. But when my mother started needing additional care services, I saw how difficult that situation is. Nobody is ever prepared for it, emotionally, logistically, or often financially.
I've learned, it doesn't take a lot of information to know if everything is ok or not with your mom or dad: How's their appetite? Are they sleeping ok? Taking their medications? In pain? Comfortable? Feeling sad or fine? Is there enough food in the fridge, is their home too cold? Nor should it take a lot of time to get that information.
For about the time it takes to take a vitamin, and far less than it would take on a phone call, caregivers and patients can communicate information that could be the difference between them staying at home healthy, or ending up in the hospital or nursing home. Or worse.
So that's why I've dedicated myself to eCaring, to foster better communication between caregivers, families and their loved ones to help keep them in their home and out of the hospital or nursing home. At the same time, I'm pleased we can provide systemic benefits to address the serious healthcare issues the country faces and the care providers and organizations seeking to address them, lowering costs, improving outcomes, and increasing quality with related revenue increases.
Investor Info
Market Size
According to the US Census Bureau, there were over 46 million people aging in place in the US last year. That number is expected to nearly double to 80 million by 2040. Numerous studies have indicated that seniors and their families will pay for services that will enable them to age in place in their homes, which enables better care for them.
Over 9 million Americans are dual eligible Medicare, Medicaid recipients, and millions more are in Medicaid programs exposed to the total cost of care for their members. Hundreds of healthcare plans, Accountable Care Organizations and physician organizations managing these patients will benefit from eCaring's proven capability to lower costs, improve outcomes, and drive higher revenues under increasingly used value-based payment programs.
In addition, millions of employees are in stressful caregiving situations, which are estimated to cost corporate America over $35 billion a year as people perform more poorly, pass up promotions or leave their jobs entirely to deal with caregiving. Getting eCaring provided to them through Employee Assistance Programs will significantly enhance their lives through greater peace of mind, through the assurance that if there is a problem it can be discovered and intercepted before it escalates to necessitating hospital or institutional care.
Projected 3 Year Growth
eCaring is currently expanding with a number of clients who are health insurers, health plans, providers and agencies. We will be launching programs using tablets and smartphones, to provide a broad range of price points and services to clients. In three years we expect to be cash flow positive with total sales in excess of $25 million, assuming very moderate market penetration.
Revenue Model
eCaring currently generates revenues through a monthly subscription model, providing software and where necessary tablets, Internet connectivity and remote device management. It plans to continue with this model, while using it as a base for participating in shared savings and revenue programs with payers and providers, as well as providing alternative payment models based on usage metrics, such as notes, alerts, and communications. The Company will work with insurers and organizations to increase their patient engagement and experience capabilities, charging modest amounts on a per enrollee basis. We expect the unique, extensive data base we generate, containing information on how elderly and ill people live their lives at home, will become significantly valuable over time.
Competitors
There is a growing focus on collecting and utilizing healthcare information from non-institutional settings. Most entrants in the field rely on either cumbersome self-reported data with high drop off rates, or limited data from remote patient monitoring systems that have been generally ineffective and not obtained significant market penetration. No other system collects the depth of information collected by eCaring as easily and intuitively, nor does any provide for the essential communications among all concerned parties that are crucial for being able to identify and rapidly respond to problems before the escalate.
Traction
We currently have pilot programs that are expanding with a larger healthcare insurer and their Managed Long Term Care Plan; programs with several home health agencies that are using eCaring as part of care coordination and management solutions for healthcare plans to enable the plans to achieve higher quality ratings, such as STAR and HEDIS, to increase their revenues; a program with a private pay agency using eCaring to differentiate its services with their clients; and a program in development with a larger insurer, a major Brooklyn hospital, and SEIU 1199, the union that represents over 600,000 home care workers nationally, to provide specially trained aides post-discharge to reduce their readmissions rate.
Due Diligence Docs
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“My mother worked until she was 79 years old. She had a few good retirement years but when her health declined my family’s lives went into a tailspin...
Progress to
date:
