Included Health

Included Health traces its corporate lineage to Grand Rounds, founded in San Francisco in 2011 by Owen Tripp (who previously co-founded Reputation.com and held leadership roles at eBay and Accenture) and, per Forge Global's company data, Lawrence Hofmann (this second co-founder credit is corroborated only by Forge Global in this research and was not found in other independent sources, so it should be treated with some caution). Grand Rounds began as an "expert medical opinion" service connecting patients with specialists for second opinions and grew into a broader clinical-navigation and virtual primary-care platform. It raised a seed round in February 2013 (~$0.8M; Harrison Metal, Michael Dearing, Lawrence Leisure), a $9.18M Series A in May 2013 (Harrison Metal, Venrock, angel investor Brad Garlinghouse), a $38.6M Series B in June 2014 led by Greylock Partners (James Slavet), a $55M Series C in June 2015 (BlackRock, Greylock, Harrison Metal), a $66M Series D in May 2018 (Adams Street Partners), and a Series E in September 2020 that was reported in the press as $175M and led by The Carlyle Group (Forge Global's transaction-level data shows a $103M tranche at a $1.13B post-money valuation on Sept 9, 2020 for that same round — the discrepancy likely reflects different reporting of the full round size vs. a single tranche/price-per-share transaction).

Separately, Doctor On Demand was founded in 2012 (some sources say 2013) by Adam Jackson along with Jay McGraw and Dr. Phil McGraw (of the daytime TV show "Dr. Phil"), and built a nationwide virtual-care/telehealth practice offering primary care, urgent care, and behavioral health. It raised a $3M seed round (Dec 2013), $21M Series A (Aug 2014), $50M Series B (June 2015), $74M Series C (April 2018), and a $75M Series D in July 2020 led by General Atlantic. By 2021, Doctor On Demand was led by CEO Hill Ferguson (a former PayPal executive) with Robin Glass as President, and served a network reaching roughly 98 million Americans through insurer and employer partnerships.

On March 16, 2021, Grand Rounds and Doctor On Demand announced a merger agreement (terms/financial details not publicly disclosed; described in press as an all-stock combination) to form what became Included Health, with Owen Tripp as CEO of the combined company and Hill Ferguson joining its board. The deal was expected to close in the first half of 2021 and combined the two organizations into roughly 2,000 employees at close. Notably, Included Health's own "About Us" narrative frames its origin story around a mission to provide "culturally competent and personalized care navigation services for marginalized populations" that later "joined forces" with Grand Rounds and Doctor On Demand in 2021 — and Crunchbase's acquisition history for the Grand Rounds/Included Health corporate entity separately lists a company called "Included Health" (apparently a distinct, smaller, New York-based startup co-founded by Colin Quinn and Joshua Riff, backed by Meridian Street Capital and Gaingels, focused on LGBTQ+ health navigation) as an acquired entity. This suggests the combined Grand Rounds/Doctor On Demand company likely also acquired this smaller, similarly named startup around the same period and adopted (or was influenced by) its "Included Health" branding; this research could not independently confirm the exact date or terms of that acquisition, so it is flagged here as an important disambiguation note rather than asserted as fact.

Business model

B2B2C: Included Health contracts with self-insured employers, health plans, labor unions, and public-sector entities (e.g., CalPERS), who pay for access to the platform on behalf of their employees/members. Included Health then delivers care, navigation, and advocacy directly to those individuals at no or low additional cost to them.

Per-employee-per-month (PEPM) and per-member-per-month (PMPM) subscription/administrative fees paid by employer and health-plan clients, supplemented by fee-for-service and value-based/shared-savings arrangements tied to reduced total cost of care (e.g., its 2026 Alternative Plan Design and pending Firefly Health integration).