Salvo Health raises $5M to expand GI Provider Enablement for Wraparound Care

New York, February 29th - Salvo Health today announced the closing of a $5 million Seed Prime round led by City Light Capital and Human Ventures to expand deployment of its wraparound GI care at providers including gastroenterology private practices, health systems, and ACOs.

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The financing included investment pro rata from all three of Salvo’s original Seed investors: Threshold Ventures, Torch Capital, and Felicis Ventures, as well as angel investors such as Anmol Madan, founder of Ginger Health and former Chief Data Scientist at Teladoc. 

Salvo also announced that Rachel Parlier of City Light and Emily Melton of Threshold will join the Board of Directors, alongside Jeffrey Glueck, the Founder & CEO of Salvo. Parlier helped lead City Light investments in innovators such as Bicycle Health and Spark Pediatrics. Melton, managing director and co-founder of Threshold, is a recent past Chair of the Board of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and has led investments in Livongo, Brightline, Imagen, Tia, and Viz.ai. Glueck, who launched Salvo in 2021, formerly served as CEO of Foursquare and as product leader and Chief Marketing Officer at Travelocity.

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"I am delighted to lead this investment in Salvo Health and their innovative wraparound care for GI and metabolic chronic conditions," said Rachel Parlier of City Light Capital. "As an early-stage impact investor, we look for companies with the potential to not just transform industries, but also to improve lives. Salvo is enabling GI practices and health systems to fill in the gaps for underserved patient populations, especially for high-touch follow-on care between appointments and post-procedures."

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“An estimated 70 million Americans are suffering from chronic gastrointestinal conditions that can cause serious disruptions to daily life,” noted Heather Hartnett, General Partner at Human Ventures. “The growing need for GI care has surpassed the supply of specialists, and Salvo Health plays an important role in filling this gap. We’re thrilled to be backing such an experienced, data-driven, and product-focused team led by Jeff, that is poised to scale significant clinical outcomes.”

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Salvo Health focuses on enabling local providers across the country to provide “wraparound care” for chronic GI and metabolic liver conditions in a hybrid approach. Patients remain under the care of their trusted local physician, adding the best of Salvo telehealth and app-based daily support for follow-on care. Salvo helps solve staff shortages and clinician burnout by enabling insurance-covered, evidence-based, interdisciplinary care including Salvo’s teams of licensed nurses, registered dietitians, and behavioral health specialists. 

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Salvo enables providers to bill RPM and CCM codes for both Medicare and commercial patients where such codes are broadly covered, thereby improving patient outcomes and generating new ancillary service revenue for practices. This positions large practices and systems on the path to value-based care arrangements, including shared savings and quality incentives. The model also frees busy providers to see more acute cases and more new patients by enabling patients to access daily support from their team at Salvo.

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Unlike some startups in the GI space that focus on disintermediating or bypassing local physicians while serving national payers or as an employer benefit, Salvo’s philosophy is to make the local physician the hub of an interdisciplinary, personalized care plan for each patient.  

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Salvo has won deals with GI practices from Brooklyn to Pennsylvania to Virginia, and with a large health system in Baton Rouge, LA. This financing will fund staff-up to execute on these enterprise deployments, and expand sales and marketing to new customers.

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The success of this hybrid “continuous care” approach was highlighted in research published at the annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) in November 2023. Salvo Clinical Advisory Board eminent physician-researchers including Dr. Mark Pimentel of Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Megan Oser of UCLA Medical, and Dr. Peter Green of Columbia were co-authors on the research.

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84% of patients described Salvo as better than previous healthcare experiences. 76% reported symptom improvement after only four or more weeks in Salvo care, notable since patients had averaged over three years of chronic symptoms before intake. Patients showed high engagement, averaging five questions a week handled by Salvo care teams, and opening the Salvo app an average of nine times per week. The median time in care was five months to complete the program. 

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In a separate two-arm study, this type of continuous care showed high potential to deliver better care at lower cost. The treatment arm showed a 79% reduction in GI-related ER and urgent care utilization, compared to a control group. This type of proactive care heads off expensive, reactive care. According to a leading actuary’s study of Total Medical Expense (TME) on over 9 million covered lives, Salvo has the potential to save payers $3 for every $1 spent on Salvo care. These savings were projected inside of a one-year measurement window, and applied also for ACO’s and other population health providers.

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Most recently, Salvo announced expansion into wraparound care for MASH and MASLD, based on requests from its GI and hepatology practices who are responsible for diagnosis of this liver condition. Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is one of the most common liver conditions worldwide, and the numbers continue to grow. Formerly named Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (or NAFLD), MASLD is estimated to affect nearly 30% of the U.S. population, rising in parallel to metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. GI practices and departments generally lack enough clinical staff trained in behavioral health and nutrition, consumer-friendly technology and rich medical content, or the analytics and machine learning expertise to optimally guide patients through a structured weight loss program. Due to increased use of GLP-1 agonists in treating MASLD, Salvo physician partners seek to offer their patients medically-supervised, comprehensive programs to complement these medications, including guidance on resistance training to maintain muscle mass, cognitive behavioral skills, help building new nutrition habits, and ensuring adequate micronutrient intake. Salvo's program has been designed to address these specific needs.

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Salvo Health as a technology company has invested deeply in addressing the shortage of licensed care providers by using software and automation so that each care team member can support more patients effectively. For Salvo patients today, two thirds of care minutes each month are delivered by software and app-based content, while one third of minutes provided by licensed personnel, letting care teams focus on the highest leverage uses of their time. This combination keeps a “human touch” and builds a therapeutic alliance with each patient, and the average response time to patients of under two hours improves access, in an affordable and scalable way.

For practices and health systems that want to speak to our team about how they can integrate Salvo RPM into their workflow and EHR quickly and efficiently, contact Amanda Sussex at amanda@salvohealth.com.

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ABOUT CITY LIGHT AND HUMAN VENTURES

City Light is a Venture Capital firm that invests early in impactful companies. The firm partners with experienced teams building category-defining solutions in the areas of healthcare, education, and climate  — where more revenue equals better lives at scale, every time. As one of the earliest and most successful impact investing firms, City Light has a track record of identifying and scaling impact in ways that build better companies.  Key portfolio investments include 2U (Nasdaq: TWOU), ShotSpotter (Nasdaq: SSTI), Trilogy (Acquired by TWOU), Ginger (now Headspace Health), and OhmConnect.

‍Human Ventures is one of New York City's premier early-stage venture firms and startup studios. Human partners with founders from the earliest stages of building and invests in category-defining companies in the areas of digital health, future of work, the attention economy and hospitality. Human is deeply embedded into the fabric of NYC's business community and backs founders who embody the diversity, resilience, and ambition of NYC. The firm has invested in and co-built more than 60 companies. Key portfolio investments include Current.com, Tia Health, Headspace Health, TheSkimm, and Paloma Health.