Parachute Health Raises $5.5 Million Seed Round
Healthcare technology platform Parachute Health announces it has raised $5.5 million to expand nationwide and transform the way patients receive the critical medical equipment they need after leaving hospitals and nursing homes.
Parachute solves multiple enduring challenges in the healthcare system by lowering costs, eliminating fraud, increasing efficiency and ensuring patients actually receive the medical equipment and services they need — such as oxygen tanks, hospital beds, walkers and wheelchairs.
Parachute’s $5.5 million in seed funding will enable the company to expand nationally. The company’s investors include Greater New York Hospital Association Ventures, Loeb Holding Corporation, Anthony Welters (Former EVP/Office of CEO for United Health Group), Fred Browne (Former President of McKesson Extended Care) and leading healthcare innovators. The company is also in the process of raising a Series A funding round to launch additional healthcare products and services.
Until now, most of the $50 billion spent annually on Durable Medical Equipment (DME) was ordered by fax machines and monitored through paper records. Parachute integrates directly with Epic, and other widely used electronic medical record softwares, to create a completely digital process based on sophisticated machine learning technology that ensures compliance with ever-changing insurance requirements.
Due to antiquated and inefficient ordering systems that don’t provide electronic delivery confirmation, more than 15% of orders for medical equipment are never delivered, and countless more orders are delivered days, weeks or months late. For patients who otherwise wouldn’t get critical equipment when needed, Parachute reduces patient readmissions by 60%.
“Imagine ordering shoes using a fax machine instead of the internet. You wouldn’t know if your order was received and even if it was, your shoes could arrive a week or even a month late. Now imagine if it wasn’t shoes, but the oxygen tank that you needed to breathe,” said Parachute CEO David Gelbard. “Despite decades of advancement across industries, healthcare still relies on the fax machine. With Parachute, we are improving the experience for patients and caregivers alike.”
“Parachute reimagines one of the most anachronistic hospital work flows, organizing resources for patients upon discharge,” said Lee Perlman, President of Greater New York Hospital Association Ventures. “They have replaced the inefficient and time intensive paper and fax process to order and get insurance approval for services such as Durable Medical Equipment, and by doing so are getting patients home sooner with the resources they need.”
Parachute was created with patient care in mind; Gelbard founded Parachute after his 80-year-old father underwent back surgery and the walker ordered through his Medicare plan never arrived. During this time, Gelbard had to take over day-to-day operations of the family’s pharmacy and recognized first-hand an opportunity to modernize the medical equipment industry through technology.
The national expansion of Parachute follows a successful Beta period last year. Since launching in New York City in 2017, Parachute has rapidly expanded due to strong demand from hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, managed care companies and medical offices and currently covers 60% of the healthcare market in New York. Already available in hundreds of healthcare facilities in 20+ states, including Hospital for Special Surgery, Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY), NYC Health & Hospitals Corp (Bellevue Hospital) and Stanford Hospital, the company has served more than 100,000 patients.
“Parachute Health ensures that our patients get the equipment they need on time and it enables our employees to focus on providing quality care instead of wasting time with faxes and phone calls to make and track orders,” said Salvatore Bastardi, Vice President for Corporate Administrative Services at Visiting Nurse Service of New York. “In the past, orders for medical equipment involved so much red tape, it could take as long as 21 days to get equipment to some patients. Thanks to Parachute, we can now supply these supports much more quickly, usually in less than three or four days.”
Before founding Parachute, Gelbard was an investment professional at Falcon Investments, a top private equity firm with more than $2.5 billion in assets under management. In addition to Gelbard, the company’s leadership team is comprised of experienced innovators in health and technology, including Chief Technology Officer Matt Pestritto (former CTO of Plated), SVP of Growth Steve Zerneri (former Senior City Launcher for UBER) and COO Zachary Fleitman (former Head of Ops at Kinsa).
