Third Eye Health

Third Eye Health is a Chicago-headquartered telehealth company that supplies after-hours physician coverage to post-acute care settings. Its network of board-certified, state-licensed physicians is available on nights, weekends and holidays, the periods when skilled nursing facilities typically lack on-site provider coverage. Nurses initiate consultations from a designated iPad using the company's SecureChat application: they select the patient (populated from the facility EHR), answer brief triage questions and tap a button to reach an on-call clinician, who responds by text, photo sharing and video within an average of under two minutes.

The offering combines four components: the physician network, tablet-based telehealth technology, care coordination services and a clinical care process. Care Coordination Managers follow up on every physician encounter and manage handoffs back to the facility's primary care providers, while attending physicians can subscribe to automated care alerts linking to a Care Coordination Dashboard with clinical summaries, notes and a chat function. The company reports analytics to facilities covering treat-in-place rate, hospital and ER transfers, admissions, chief complaints prompting consults, physician response time and consultation type. Third Eye Health states its services are intended to increase treat-in-place rates, avoid unnecessary emergency department transfers and reduce hospital readmissions, while also relieving on-call burden for facility providers and aiding staff recruitment.

Customers include skilled nursing facilities, provider groups, health systems and health plans; the company also extends virtual care to patients in assisted living, independent living and home settings across the post-acute continuum. Leadership comprises co-founder and CEO Dan Herbstman (previously Senior Director, Diagnostics and Software at Haemonetics), co-founder and CTO Lucas Baran (original developer of the tablet-based platform, previously at Fidelity Investments and Dynamic Clinical Systems), COO Laurie Dotas, CFO Paivi Smith, Chief Medical Officer Zahra Shariff MD and Chief Nursing Officer Suzanne Carney RN.

Founding story

Third Eye Health was founded in 2014 by Dan Herbstman and Lucas Baran. Herbstman had previously been Senior Director, Diagnostics and Software at Haemonetics and worked in healthcare consulting at Abt Associates and Perot Systems and in medical technology at EPIX Medical; Baran, who built the company's original tablet-based telehealth technology, had developed trading floor applications at Fidelity Investments and led development at Dynamic Clinical Systems.

Business model

Third Eye Health sells business-to-business to healthcare organizations, contracting with skilled nursing operators, provider groups, health systems and payers to serve as the on-call physician service during after-hours periods, typically 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. on weekdays plus weekends and holidays. Physicians are credentialed in the states where they deliver care, with more than 10 credentialed per state and typically 5-10 scheduled per shift, and the company's protocols are configured to each client's existing policies during implementation.

Per Preqin, revenue comes from a partnership model with healthcare providers, health systems and payer organizations, structured primarily around subscription agreements with tiered pricing based on service volume, ranging from basic consultations to comprehensive care coordination. Separately, the company bills professional fees for qualifying night and weekend encounters using CPT codes 99307-99310 (once per day per patient per provider group, excluding H&P codes), and its facility clients may bill Medicare Part B telehealth originating site facility fees of 80% of the lesser of the actual charge or $27.02.

Traction

The website reports more than 800,000 encounters, a 92% average treat-in-place rate and 90+ licensed clinicians; the team page references a nationwide team of over 80 physicians. Preqin records four completed deals as of September 6, 2023.

Latest developments

In September 2023 the company raised $6 million in Series B funding, reported by Preqin as intended to support development and launch of new telehealth products for care coordination and expansion into additional Southeast U.S. markets by the end of 2024.