Cardiologist-founded virtual cardiology clinic raises $8M to expand heart failure offerings
Ventricle Health, a North Carolina-based virtual cardiology clinic backed by private-equity investors, has raised $8 million to fund the expansion of its heart failure care model.
Ventricle Health helps patients schedule cardiologist appointments from the comfort of their own homes in a matter of days, delivering easy access to guideline-directed medical therapies proven to improve outcomes among heart patients. Treating heart failure has been one of Ventricle Health’s key priorities since Daniel Bensimhon, MD, a cardiologist with the Cone Health system in North Carolina, founded the company back in 2021.
“Our foundational service lines offer a rapid path for either payers or value-based provider groups to connect heart failure patients to high-quality cardiology services and provides a model for cardiologists to effectively manage more patients,” Bensimhon said in a prepared statement announcing the new funding. “Study after study has shown that getting heart failure patients on appropriate guideline-directed medical therapy can dramatically improve health outcomes and lead to marked reductions in costs and improvements in quality of life in just weeks—yet typically less than 20% of our patients are on these medications even when they come out of the hospital.”
Funding was provided by RA Capital Management, Waterline Ventures and other industry investors.
“Not unlike what we’ve seen in the kidney disease category, heart failure today is often first diagnosed only after a patient has been hospitalized. This makes heart failure an area poised for significant value-based disruption,” Anurag Kondapalli, principal at RA Capital Management, said in the same statement. “We spent considerable time looking across companies operating in the cardiovascular care space. Rather than purely focusing on a technology-based solution, Ventricle Health stood out to our team as the unique clinical leader poised to offer ACOs and payers a rapidly deployable, full turn-key solution that can deliver outsized value for their partners. This marks RA’s fifth value-based care investment in the past two years as we’ve scoured the market for what we consider to be best-model companies to unlock value in healthcare.”
Michael has more than 18 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.