We have reflected on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on our portfolio, our limited partners, and our employees. Our thoughts first go to the safety and wellbeing of those in our network. We recognize the selfless determination of those on the frontlines of care: the health systems racing to expand capacity in an effort to stay “ahead of the curve,” the physicians and caregivers who are directly treating COVID patients daily, and the payers who have been rapidly expanding coverage and enhancing access to remote care.
We think of the dedication and tenacity of our portfolio companies, whose leadership snapped into action over the past month, rolling out virtual offices, implementing comprehensive infection control protocols, and developing detailed contingency plans to safeguard both the health of their customers and employees, as well as the integrity of business operations during this period of uncertainty. We are moved by how many of our companies rose to the challenge of directly tackling the COVID outbreak. As a particularly poignant example, Twistle, a care plan automation company in HEP III, developed five pathways for monitoring COVID patients and exposed providers per the CDC’s guidelines. As of the writing of this memorandum, Twistle is engaging with 264 COVID-positive patients at various levels of concern through its platform.
With each day that passes, examples like this reaffirm the responsiveness of the core themes behind which HEP invests to the pain points that this outbreak has brought acutely into focus; these include building the next-generation virtual care infrastructure, leveraging analytics to reduce preventable harm, and improving outcomes through hyper-personalized care. While we acknowledge the economic disruption that COVID will represent throughout our sector and beyond, we do not believe that the current epidemic will erode the core demand drivers that underpinned our original investment thesis. As an organization, the HEP team has experience investing across multiple economic and political cycles and is equipped to help its portfolio companies navigate this period with strategic and financial support. We believe that the core principles we champion in evaluating companies — capital efficiency, fanatical commitment to the customer, and focus on leveraging technology to improve quality — are ones that will serve our management teams well as they chart their future courses.
Regards,
Health Enterprise Partners