Palo Alto, California-based Call9, has raised $10 million in Series A funding to expand its telehealth service created for those who call 911 most frequently, which is people in nursing homes. Index Ventures led the round, with its cofounder Neil Rimer joining the company’s board.

Also participating in financing were Ali Rowghani from Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund; Joe Lonsdale, the VC and co-founder of Palantir Technologies; and Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe.

With existing revenue streams and staff of just 12 full time employees, Call9 is an attractive investment.Call9 aims to reduce visits to emergency rooms by connecting the nursing home staff via video chat to one of 27 on-call emergency room doctors who are now working with Call9. In many cases, a Call9 doctor can guide nursing home employees to address the situation themselves, prescribe the patient medication when necessary, or call an ambulance if little can be done over the phone.

Since launching last June, Call9 has gone live in three New York nursing homes and has prevented 55 percent of trips to the ER in the patients it has seen. The plan is to expand to 65 facilities by the end of 2016, and eventually target other institutions, such as schools, hotels, offices and on factory floors.

With existing revenue streams and staff of just 12 full time employees, Call9 is an attractive investment and we’re confident it will have no problems attracting additional capital when/if needed. The company charges nursing homes a subscription fee for seeing patients, and also bills Medicare and Medicaid for the patients it sees, as well as those patients’ insurance companies.

[Via: TechCrunch]