At Acumen America, we back founders with innovative solutions to improve health equity across the United States. We believe community-based organizations (CBOs) and community health workers (CHWs) are an integral part of the healthcare ecosystem: They have their pulse on the well-being of their neighbors, provide patients with culturally competent care, and are essential to improving health outcomes. Yet billing and reimbursement is a pain point for CBOs and health payers.
Pear Suite is changing that by providing CBOs with the digital infrastructure necessary to operate at scale and connect with and reimburse CHWs. Our work at Acumen America is focused on finding the most visionary entrepreneurs that we feel can influence long-term health outcomes and drive broader systems change in the American healthcare system. Which is why we’re so excited about our recent investment in Pear Suite. Here’s why.
Innovation that meets the moment
For years, CBOs struggled with how to pay and sustain the work of CHWs. The care was almost exclusively funded by grants and philanthropy. There was no question that CHWs were an integral part of America’s healthcare system, but it was incredibly difficult to bill healthcare providers for it. Until now.
Over the past few years, 20 states have implemented policy changes that allow Medicaid to reimburse CHWs for services provided. This changed everything. These new policy measures legitimized and sustained CHWs and their role in a way that it didn’t exist before. CHWs are now a part of the American healthcare model. The problem is, CBOs are small, under-resourced organizations that often struggle to navigate the nuances of the byzantine health billing system.
Pear Suite created a one-stop shop for claims and reimbursement. Their technology helps CBOs and CHWs connect with patients and bill healthcare companies of all sizes, with a particular focus on Medicaid.
It’s the perfect blend of policy and innovation. Pear Suite has built this platform expressly for this moment, and with this Series A they are primed to take the company to new heights. We know that community health workers play a critical role in the healthcare ecosystem. Many states have finally acknowledged that. Now, Pear Suite is eliminating administrative bottlenecks and making it easier and more convenient for these CHWs to get reimbursed, so they can do what they’re best at: improving the health and lives of their communities.
It’s already a proven model
Since 2021, Pear Suite has partnered with more than 300 CBOs, 2,500 CHWs, and served more than 100,000 people. And they know their platform works and has potential for scale because customers continue to pay for it: They have a 96% customer retention rate. Both the small CBOs (the average size of the CBOs they serve is 6-10 CHWs) and the large health plans like it because it solves critical pain points in billing and payment for everyone: Payers, patients, and the CHWs who deliver care.
They already have significant traction. There is a willingness to pay from their customers and overwhelming evidence of product market fit. They’ve proven out the model, which is why we’re so excited to be part of this new round—alongside an incredible group of mission-aligned investors, including Rock Health Capital, California Health Care Foundation, The SCAN Foundation, Impact Engine, and more—that will help them scale.
This investment expands and diversifies our health equity work
We have invested heavily in innovations that sell to health plans. That work is critical to systems change and delivering care, but we’re excited about investing in a company that is helping community-based organizations thrive and serve their patients. We’re thrilled to get to work with Pear Suite on expanding what we believe is an essential care model.
We’ve invested in a lot of innovation in the social determinants of health (SDOH) space, but most are more focused on assessing and treating a patient’s SDOH needs. We haven’t seen nearly enough companies that are driving dollars into community-based organizations. These CBOs are vital to their communities and we feel an urgent need to bolster them in the current policy environment. Pear Suite has built a mechanism to do that in a very meaningful way.
CBO and CHW reimbursement continues to expand. Pear Suite, with its technology and intimate understanding of the needs of CBOs, is poised to scale as payment models across the country change. And it aligns with our vision of reimagining models in healthcare. Co-founder Colby Takeda is a registered CHW and understands what it takes to make the lives of CHWs—and their patients—better. From a mission perspective, Takeda and his co-founder Nick Lockett are aligned on how to improve health equity. We can’t wait to see where they take Pear Suite and how it drives broader changes in American healthcare.
Veenu Aulakh is the Executive Director of the Medicaid Innovation Collaborative, a program of Acumen America.
