Todd Watts, co-founder and chief executive of healthcare fintech firm PatientFi, says he is building on the momentum that earned him the Business Journal’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award last March.
Since PatientFi expanded its financing services for elective procedures into the fertility care space, Watts said they’re now the category leader across fertility and IVF treatments.
“It proves we can take our solution, and it can work in a very different medical specialty,” Watts told the Business Journal.
Sales last year grew more than 65%, driven in part by category expansion, particularly in fertility, according to Watts. In December, PatientFi announced a partnership with Boston IVF, a national fertility network with more than 24 labs across the U.S. and Canada.
Irvine-based PatientFi, founded in 2017, offers a point-of-sale technology platform that helps patients finance out-of-pocket healthcare expenses through monthly payment plans.
Patients can get approvals of up to $50,000 within minutes.
The company, which has an emphasis on medical aesthetics with a network of 5,000 medical providers across the plastic surgery, medical spa and dentistry industries, began expanding into new specialty markets about two and a half years ago.
“We’ve always picked a specialty, put all of our focus on it until we reach a critical mass dominant physician, then we move on to the next one,” Watts said.
Targeting Audiology Next
PatientFi has identified audiology as another specialty market to expand into.
Starting last year, it has onboarded nearly 1,000 audiology clinics.
“It’s the perfect product market fit for us,” Watts said. “We know that profile of borrower really well.”
Similar to fertility, Watts said audiology is a primarily cash-pay market with few options to pay over time.
“You get a new hearing aid every five years and it’s $5,000 on average, so just like any of our other specialties, that’s a really big number,” he said. “Which means people, if they’re not getting insurance coverage for it, can have a more affordable financing.”
Aesthetic Record Partnership
PatientFi announced another large partnership at the end of last year with Aesthetic Record, integrating its financing solutions into Aesthetic Record’s practice management system, which is used by more than 9,000 clinics.
Through the partnership, practices can now offer PatientFi’s payment plans alongside Aspire Galderma Rewards, a free loyalty program that lets patients earn points for treatments across the Galderma portfolio.
Watts said that partnership represents a “key evolution” he believes will take place across the industry: financial technology platforms becoming fully integrated into business ecosystems.
“As a standalone platform, it’s a lot harder to differentiate yourself because people don’t want to go through the pain of using it, so integration makes it really easy,” Watts said.
“Bright times are ahead” for fintech, according to Watts, due to reduced interest rates making it easier for lenders to make better offers to patients.
Regarding a potential exit, Watts said that the company is not actively pursuing anything right now, but that there are plenty of options for the future.
“I think we could sell the business or take it public—we’ve had a lot of inbound interest on both fronts, but for now, over the next two or three years, we’ll keep growing and doing what we’re doing,” Watts said.
