This startup has raised $600 million to give lower-income Americans better healthcare

This startup has raised $600 million to give lower-income Americans better healthcare Amy Farley

Cityblock Health is No. 29 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2023. Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture.

Cityblock Health was founded in 2017 to answer the question, as cofounder and CEO Toyin Ajayi puts it: “Why does it cost so much money to deliver care that doesn’t actually drive the outcomes we would expect?”

Cityblock provides healthcare services to Medicaid and dually eligible Medicare beneficiaries, who account for a disproportionate amount of dollars spent on healthcare in the U.S., according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. It blends primary care, behavioral health, and disease management services, taking into account environmental and societal factors—such as insecure housing and living in a food desert—that can lead to chronic health conditions and hospitalizations.

Cityblock’s clinics are staffed with teams of doctors, nurses, social workers, and mental health providers, and it offers in-home and virtual care. Patients are assigned teams that are tailored to their needs, a model that Ajayi says eliminates the inefficiencies of traditional reactive care—those doctor and hospital visits that occur when a patient is already ill. The Brooklyn-based company, which raised nearly $600 million in 2021 and is valued at more than $6 billion, has about 100,000 members, and operates in six states, plus Washington, D.C. It recently expanded into Indiana and Ohio.

Cityblock has a reputation for keeping patients out of expensive emergency rooms and saving insurers money. At the request of its healthcare partners, in 2022 Cityblock began expanding programs for maternity care and advanced behavioral health, which sits at the intersection of mental health and substance-abuse care, bringing its services to even more patients.

Cityblock Health is one of a handful of companies that are stepping in to address the needs of underserved patients. Read our full report on how these healthcare innovators are changing the system.