Overview
PatientPing connected healthcare providers when a shared patient moved between care settings. Its software sent an alert when a participating hospital or other facility reported an admission, discharge, or transfer. Jay Desai and David Berkowitz built the Boston company around a gap in care coordination: a primary care team often did not know that its patient had visited another facility. [1] [2]
Appriss Health completed its acquisition in May 2021. The combined company became Bamboo Health, which continues to offer the Pings product. PatientPing's story is therefore one of a network joining a larger network, not evidence that the product stopped working. [3] [4]
Founding Story
Desai started PatientPing in 2013 after working at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. There he helped implement accountable care and bundled-payment programs. These programs gave participating providers responsibility for costs and outcomes while patients could still seek care across organizations. That freedom made it hard for a care team to know when a patient needed attention elsewhere. [5] [2]
Desai told HIStalk in 2017 that the basic request was, “Just tell me where my patients are.” He and Berkowitz founded PatientPing to make that information available across facility boundaries. F-Prime says it backed the company early and shared its offices with the team. Public sources consulted do not explain how the founders met. [2] [1]
The team tested the value of a local network before expanding nationally. In a 2020 interview, Desai described asking Steward Health Care which communications mattered most, then concentrating on three nursing homes. “We really narrowed down to the most molecular bites,” he said. The approach gave the company a practical way to connect a small group before selling a broader network. [6]
Timeline
- 2013: Desai started PatientPing. [5]
- 2015: The company announced $8 million in new funding and an earlier $1.6 million round. [7]
- 2016: Andreessen Horowitz and Leerink Transformation Partners led a $31.6 million Series B. [8]
- 2017: PatientPing expanded partnerships including Mercy Health and the Connecticut Hospital Association. [9] [10]
- 2020: PatientPing announced a $60 million Series C and described a network connected to more than 1,000 hospitals. MedCity News later reported that the round had closed in February 2019. [19] [11]
- 2021: Appriss Health acquired PatientPing and later adopted the Bamboo Health name. [3] [12]
What They Built
PatientPing's core product watched for events from participating facilities and notified the providers who had a relationship with the patient. An alert could include the facility and care-team contacts; the receiving team could then coordinate with the clinicians treating the patient. The product addressed a narrow but consequential question: where is this patient receiving care now? [2] [9]
By 2020, PatientPing had added Callouts for program engagement and Spotlights for network utilization data. It also introduced a flag for patients with symptoms consistent with COVID-19. These features widened the product beyond the original event alert, though the company did not publish enough evidence to isolate each feature's clinical effect. [11]
The current Bamboo Pings feed displays recent patient events and supports follow-up actions. Bamboo says the product is available through clinical-system integrations and web or mobile interfaces. The successor product is an existing competitor to anyone rebuilding this concept. [4] [13]
Market Position
Target Customers
PatientPing served hospitals, post-acute facilities, physician organizations, accountable care organizations, and health plans. Each had a different reason to want notifications. A hospital needed to communicate a transition; a care manager needed to follow a patient after it. The network became more useful when the relevant organizations in a region participated. [11]
Market Size
The sources reviewed do not establish PatientPing's addressable market or its share of that market. Its opportunity depended on a specific workflow rather than a count of all healthcare spending: identifying patients across organizations and routing events to teams able to act.
Competition
PatientPing competed with internal hospital workflows, existing health information exchanges, and other care coordination networks. PointClickCare's Collective Network, for example, describes encounter notifications for post-acute care providers. A new entrant must therefore win access to data and fit existing work, not merely produce another alert. [14]
Business Model
Desai described a two-sided model in 2017: facilities could send data without charge, while recipients paid for notifications. Reducing the cost of contributing data could encourage participation; payment depended on recipients finding the resulting alerts useful. That description was from 2017, not a guarantee of later terms. Middlesex Health later described a no-cost option for community providers. The sources reviewed do not disclose overall revenue, margins, or customer acquisition costs. [18] [2]
Traction
In June 2020, PatientPing reported connections to over 1,000 hospitals and 5,000 post-acute facilities, with 135 million admission, discharge, and transfer events for 43 million covered lives. These are company-reported network measures, not proof that every notification led to better care. [11]
The Connecticut Hospital Association reported that its collaboration with PatientPing had sent over two million notifications to nearly 400 provider organizations across 22 states by 2019. Association partnerships helped aggregate participants, although local coverage still depended on which facilities contributed data. [15]
Outcome and evolution
A network gained value at the handoff
PatientPing's product was strongest when it reached both sides of a transition. Free data submission addressed one side of that problem, while charging recipients tested whether the alert was worth acting on. This is an inference from the business model and product design, not a published measure of the company's unit economics. [2]
The timing also mattered. CMS's 2020 interoperability rule created an electronic notification requirement for certain hospitals, effective in 2021. Its applicability depended on the hospital's systems, and CMS did not require hospitals to use PatientPing or a single technology. The rule supported the category without proving why any particular customer selected the company. [16]
Appriss combined complementary networks
Appriss said its behavioral health and substance-use capabilities complemented PatientPing's care coordination network. The parties reported that the transaction valued the combined company at more than $1.5 billion. That figure is for the combined company, not the purchase price or PatientPing's standalone value. The parties did not disclose enough information to calculate investor returns. [3]
Appriss renamed the combined business Bamboo Health in August 2021. Desai later became Bamboo's CEO, and Pings remains available. The acquisition expanded the owner's stated scope across physical and behavioral health; the available evidence does not establish the financial return from the deal. [12] [17]
Key Lessons
- Build density around a real handoff. PatientPing began with a small set of nursing homes relevant to Steward Health Care. That gave both sending and receiving organizations a reason to participate before a national network existed. [6]
- Choose who pays carefully. PatientPing charged recipients rather than senders. That design aligned payment with the team receiving the alert, while reducing friction for data contributors. Its profitability remains unknown. [2]
- Separate policy support from product selection. CMS required certain hospitals to send notifications, but allowed several methods. A vendor still had to prove coverage and usefulness within the care team's workflow. [16]