Post-acute admissions remain one of the most stubbornly manual handoffs in healthcare. Getting a patient out of an acute bed and into a nursing or rehabilitation facility still runs on fax machines and phone calls, and investors have now put another $20M behind an attempt to automate it. Basalt Health’s Series A brings its total raised to $24.5M.
For the round, returning lead investor New Enterprise Associates wrote its check again. Frist Cressey Ventures took part again too, and so did 25m Health, the healthcare studio arm that 25madison runs with backing from Apollo Global Management.
The problem Basalt attacks is analog by default. Some 14 million patients move into post-acute care every year. Case managers at hospitals still assemble clinical dossiers of roughly 70 pages for each placement, then send them out to an average of 6.6 facilities. Avoidable readmission expenses are put at $17B a year.
Founded in 2024 by CEO Ben Hackett, a former Accolade executive, Basalt sits as an automation layer over that intake work, ingesting unstructured referrals and speeding up matching between hospitals and the facilities that take their patients.
ScionHealth accounts for 62 hospitals in the company’s expansion plan, where incoming referrals will run through the platform for a network of more than 6,000 clinicians, and Lifepoint Health will add 49 markets beyond its initial pilot sites. Basalt expects the rollout to reach 111 enterprise markets before 2026 ends.
The bet is that faster placement keeps patients moving out of acute beds without bouncing back through the emergency department.
