On October 8, the senior executives at the Nashville-based Main Street Health, a company that provides care navigation capabilities to primary care clinics in rural areas, announced that it had raised over $315 million in new capital, in order to dramatically expand its presence nationwide.
The executives posted a press release on Sunday morning that began thus: “Today, Main Street Health, the nation's largest value-based healthcare organization exclusively serving rural America, announced its expansion into 26 states. In conjunction with this announcement, Main Street announced it has raised over $315M in new capital including investment from strategic health plan and provider partners.
"The trust that exists between rural providers and their patients is truly unique," said Brad Smith, Chairman and CEO of Main Street Health and former Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). "Across the country, we have seen that by partnering with local physicians and their teams to deliver high-touch, value-based care, we can improve the overall quality, cost, and experience of healthcare in rural America."
The press release went on to say that “Main Street partners with primary care clinics in rural America by placing a Health Navigator in each partner clinic. The Health Navigator assists the clinic's providers with care coordination activities including ensuring patients have preventive screenings, calling patients to remind them to pick up their medications, scheduling patients for primary care visits after they are discharged from the hospital, and assisting patients with social determinant of health needs.
Main Street's early outcomes have been very strong and include:
42 percent improvement in quality Star scores
23 percent reduction in hospitalizations
9 percent reduction in medical costs”
"Main Street has helped transform the type of care we deliver in our clinic," said Dr. Thomas Borgstedte, owner of Family Health Center in La Grange, Texas, in a statement included in the press release. "The Health Navigator and the data Main Street provides allow us to coordinate care for our patients in a way that we would never have been able to do otherwise."
The press release noted that “Main Street currently partners with over 900 clinics across 18 states with plans to expand into an additional eight states in 2024. The average clinic Main Street partners with has 2.5 providers and is located in a town of 3,000 to 5,000 people.”
And it quoted Annie Lamont, lead investor in the round and Managing Partner at Oak HC/FT, as stating that, "In my 30 years of investing, I have never seen a company successfully scale this quickly with outcomes this strong. I think this speaks to the opportunity that exists to improve healthcare across rural America as well as the operational experience of the Main Street team."
The press release noted that, “In addition to Oak HC/FT, Main Street's investors in this round include the five largest national Medicare Advantage plans, who collectively serve over 74 percent of Medicare Advantage members in the country. The round also includes investment from many of Main Street's provider partners including large health systems, regional hospitals, and individual primary care physicians.”
The company’s website notes that “We work with all types of rural providers: small independent private practices; large group private practices; rural health clinics; critical access hospitals; community health centers; health systems.” It further notes that “We understand the value of community and building trusted relationships, and that is why we are present in each community we serve. We do that by embedding a local Health Navigator in every practice and hiring local teams in every market we serve. A Health Navigator is an extra set of hands to assist you with doing all the little things you need to do every day to deliver the best possible care to the patients in your practice.”
Further information about how Main Street Health’s health navigator program works, can be found here.
