The news: PatientPop is merging with healthcare cloud company Kareo to form Tebra—a digital health company that aims to bring an all-in-one platform for providers to run their practice and enable them to easily connect with patients.

• PatientPop and Kareo’s combined footprint supports over 100,000 providers who are delivering care to 85 million+ US patients. All offerings will be available under the Tebra brand by the end of Q1 2022.

Who are PatientPop and Kareo?

PatientPop helps doctors grow their practices via tech-enabled marketing strategies, cloud-based offerings, online scheduling, and an online platform to practice virtual care.

• Patients can even make appointments through their social media accounts, while providers can automate their front office administrative functions (like intake forms, lab orders, referrals, appointment reminders, and scheduling follow-ups).
• Greater accessibility of appointment booking and seamless front-office administration can help reduce no-shows and cancellations and the costs tied to them: Missed appointments cost the US healthcare system an estimated $150 billion annually.

Meanwhile, Kareo provides software that supports electronic health records (EHRs) and billing for independent practices. It integrates other features like practice management, patient engagement, and connecting to third-party health apps and services.

Why PatientPop+Kareo’s tech is a lifeline to many private practices: PatientPop’s platform can help practices boost patient acquisition and retention, while Kareo’s tech provides a user-friendly EHR system and billing analytics to optimize private practice revenues.

Private practices’ patient volumes plunged due to the pandemic:

• Appointment volume dropped 56% and 36% of patients delayed care due to the pandemic, per Urban Institute’s research.
• This meant that many private practices struggled to stay afloat, financially—and many are still reeling from that impact: 97% of private practices reported experiencing a negative financial impact due to the pandemic, per a 2020 MGMA survey of 724 US private practices.

Tebra will alleviate the admin burden on physicians and allow private practices to keep up with digital health innovation—something their health system counterparts are actively leveraging to improve patient satisfaction and capture even more patients.

• For example, practices that were using PatientPop saw a return to pre-pandemic patient volume 14 weeks before the national average when practices reached pre-pandemic visit levels.

What’s next? The merger primes Tebra to facilitate private practice consolidation down the road.

• With hundreds of practices using Tebra’s tech, it opens up the opportunity for Tebra to potentially build out a connected network of its private practice clients to facilitate easier referrals.
• And as its practices grow, Tebra can play a role in helping them consolidate.