Call9
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Call9 was a telemedicine startup that brought on-demand emergency care to nursing homes. It stationed paramedics, EMTs or nurses inside skilled nursing facilities and connected them via a video platform (through iPads) to remote palliative and emergency physicians available around the clock. The goal was to reduce unnecessary emergency-room transfers for nursing-home residents — among the most frequent 911 callers — and to improve patient outcomes and end-of-life care discussions.
02 / Call9 FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Call9 failed because the healthcare market was not ready for its value-based care model. The company bet that the industry would shift toward paying doctors based on patient outcomes, which would have let it share the savings from avoided emergency-room visits with insurance partners. Instead, the industry remained dominated by fee-for-service billing, and the split arrangement with insurers did not generate enough revenue to sustain the company. Unable to raise further funding to scale, Call9 shut down operations in June 2019 and laid off about 100 employees.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Founded in Silicon Valley by Timothy Peck, an emergency medicine physician, and Celina Tenev, a Stanford radiology researcher, to deliver telehealth emergency services to nursing homes.
- Expansion
Expanded operations to the Albany, New York area and worked with insurers including Anthem, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Healthfirst, as well as nursing-home providers such as Centers Health Care and ArchCare.
- Shutdown
Shut down operations and laid off about 100 employees after failing to raise further funding; the company cited the slow adoption of value-based care. Remaining assets were restructured and co-founder Timothy Peck continued the Call9 Medical physician practice.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Raised approximately $34 million in venture funding from investors including Index Ventures, Y Combinator, the YC Continuity Fund, 8VC and 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki.
- 02
Wound down operations in June 2019, laying off about 100 employees.
- 03
Restructured remaining assets; co-founder Timothy Peck continued to operate Call9 Medical, the physician practice, and explored a pivot of the remaining assets into a new company.
- 04
No reliable disclosed figure exists for the realized financial loss on the wind-down; $34 million was capital raised, not loss.