Teladoc is a telehealth provider based in Purchase, N.Y. Here are 10 things to know about the company.
1. Teladoc was founded in 2002 with a threefold goal: improve patient access, lower costs and improve healthcare quality. It has been operational since 2005 and went public in July 2015.
The company has two sectors: Teladoc Inc. and TelaDoc Physicians, P.A.:
- Teladoc Inc. administers services for TelaDoc Physicians, P.A.
- TelaDoc Physicians, P.A. is an organization that employs or contracts with physicians licensed to practice medicine.
2. Jason Gorevic serves as president and CEO of Teladoc, a position he's held since 2009. He also sits on the company's board of directors.
3. Teladoc boasts being the first provider of telehealth medical visits in the country. With 17.5 million members and more than 1.6 million visits since its inception, the company has a 10-minute median response time before patients are connected with a physician. Approximately 92 percent of patients that use Teladoc have their issues resolved.
4. Teladoc's national network consists of more than 3,600 licensed healthcare professionals who each have 20 years of experience on average. Physicians in Teladoc's network can diagnose a variety of issues, from general health to behavioral health to dermatology. Bronchitis, diarrhea, pink eye, fever and the flu represent a small sampling of the issues Teladoc doctors have treated in the past year.
5. Teladoc has received numerous honors and awards over the years. In April 2016, the company won Frost & Sullivan's 2016 Product Line Strategy Leadership Award for Virtual Telemedicine Services. In 2015, Teladoc was listed 27th on MIT Technology Review's list of the "50 Smartest Companies."
6. On March 1, Teladoc released its 2016 financial results. The company's full-year 2016 revenue was $123.2 million, an increase of 59 percent from 2015. Teladoc also reported a net loss in full-year 2016 operating income of $74.2 million compared to $58 million in 2015.*
7. In December 2016, the American Hospital Association exclusively endorsed Teladoc's telehealth technology platform. The endorsement comes out of Health Forum, AHA's strategic business enterprise, which awards the AHA Endorsement to products and services that help member hospitals and healthcare organizations promote operational excellence.
8. Teladoc has more than 7,500 clients, which include 30 health plans, more than 110 health systems and hospitals and more than 220 Fortune 1000 companies. A few of Teladoc's notable members include Oscar Health, Blue Shield of California, Driscoll Health System, Philadelphia-based Einstein Healthcare Network, PepsiCo and T-Mobile.
9. In June 2015, Boston-based American Well filed a patent infringement suit against Purchase, N.Y.-based Teladoc in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. American Well alleged Teladoc used a similar algorithm to connect consumers with physicians. One year later, the Massachusetts federal court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that major elements of American Well's patent were "too abstract," and thus invalid. At the request of Teladoc, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office also invalidated parts of American Well's telemedicine patent in August 2016.
10. Beginning in 2011, Teladoc and the Texas Medical Board were entwined in a battle over telemedicine rights and services in the state. The companies went back and forth for years regarding whether Teladoc's practices violate Texas regulations. Most recently, in October 2016, the Texas Medical Board voluntarily dismissed its appeal, which asked the 5th Circuit Court to "bar [Teladoc's] antitrust challenge of a state rule that requires physicians to see patients face-to-face before providing remote care," according to a Law360 report.
*These financial results were updated March 2.