Resolution Care, Humboldt County's groundbreaking palliative care company, has been sold to Vynca, an advanced care planning technology company, in a merger that Resolution Care founder Michael Fratkin hopes will ultimately allow for a national expansion of the patient-centered care the company has prided itself on providing.

Founded in 2014, Resolution Care's palliative care teams rely heavily on telemedicine to help people live out their lives comfortably and on their own terms in the face of serious — often fatal — illness. With patients and quality of life as its focus, Resolution Care provides a litany of services, viewing healthcare not as a simple matrix of treatments and medications, but of desired outcomes with the goal of giving people the highest quality of life. As such, the company does everything from helpits its patients fight housing insecurity to getting to the grocery store to navigating healthcare services and making end-of-life plans.

Vynca, meanwhile, was founded in 2013 to create technology and analytics to help patients and providers document and share end-of-life planning documents, reducing medical errors, adverse efforts and unwanted healthcare utilization, according to a press release.

Fratkin said he's confident the merging of Vynca's engineering and software know-how, as well as the deep relationships the company has forged with healthcare systems throughout the country, with Resolution Care's model for the delivery of patient-centered care will be a perfect marriage, allowing more people to get the personalized care they deserve.

"The hope is to partner and collaborate with hospices around the country, as well as other palliative care programs," he said. "What we bring is the ability to take care of the actual people who have the actual illness and the actual challenges to their lived experiences. What they bring is business intelligence, relationships and a hunger and thirst to finance growth."

Under the deal announced yesterday, Fratkin will become Vynca's chief medical officer. And, Fratkin stressed, all local employees will be retained and the 230 or so current patients of Resolution Care will not see any changes.

"Everyone stays," Fratkin said, adding that the company will also be looking to make some new hires. "That was really important — that everyone who has been part of bringing us to this moment gets to stay and, I would say, their future is both brighter and more solid than it has been. It's nice not to be a startup anymore."

See the full press release from Vynca copied below and read past Journal coverage of Resolution Care here, here and here.

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Vynca, a national leader in advance care planning, today announced that it has acquired California-based ResolutionCare, an innovator and provider of home-based palliative care and telemedicine. With the addition of ResolutionCare's comprehensive board-certified, physician-led palliative care model, Vynca is well-positioned to expand its support services to the seriously ill, which complements the organization's existing technology and analytics solutions.

Vynca has the largest advance care planning network across the U.S. with a solid reputation for its ability to help individuals, their caregivers and clinicians navigate the complex advance care planning process and ensure that patients' voices are heard. Through the engagement in and documentation of advance care plans, the organization ensures that personalized end-of-life care is available for every individual, every time – reducing medical errors, adverse efforts and unwanted healthcare utilization, while improving patient, caregiver and clinician experience. To date, almost one million unique individuals across all 50 states have care plans in the Vynca solution.

ResolutionCare was founded with the mission to provide human-centered support when individuals are facing serious illnesses. Providing a combination of in-home and virtual palliative care, the board-certified, physician-led interdisciplinary team works with the existing care team to deliver comprehensive, high-quality and standardized treatment resources to meet the unique needs of patients who are critically ill. By partnering with Medicare Advantage and Managed Medicaid plans, ResolutionCare's interventions have produced outcomes that improve the member experience, while also reducing costs on behalf of the groups they serve.

Through this acquisition, Vynca will introduce to the market its serious illness management platform that couples the company's technology and analytics with ResolutionCare's virtual care capabilities, including palliative care, advance care planning, care coordination, symptom management, whole-person care and provider engagement. Offering a comprehensive range of tech-enabled services from a single point of trust, Vynca will deliver value to healthcare organizations looking to succeed in value-based arrangements, as well as support the hundreds of physician organizations seeking to participate in Direct Contracting, Medicare's newest population health payment model.

"Vynca and ResolutionCare have long shared a common vision of ensuring high-quality, human-centered, goal concordant care," said Ryan Van Wert, MD, CEO and co-founder, Vynca. "Through this acquisition, we are now well-positioned to leverage our respective strengths to deliver to the industry a comprehensive serious illness management platform, an offering that has proven attractive to health plans and the increasing number of healthcare provider organizations in value-based arrangements."

Joining the Vynca leadership team will be ResolutionCare founder and CEO, Michael Fratkin, MD, FAAHPM, who will serve as Vynca's chief medical officer. With more than 25 years of experience, he founded ResolutionCare in 2016 after working as a palliative care consultant at St. Joseph Hospital and medical director at Humboldt Medical Specialists.

"From the beginning, ResolutionCare has been focused on making palliative care more accessible to rural and underserved communities, and we are excited to expand our reach by joining forces with Vynca," said Fratkin. "The pandemic has brought to the light the powerful impact of virtual palliative care, which is critical as demand for these services grows in areas where resources are scarce."

ResolutionCare's president and chief operating officer, Brian Mistler, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, will join Vynca as chief people officer and clinical services operations. Brian is an experienced healthcare administrator, with expertise in organizational change management and mental health.

"ResolutionCare's mission, which is to provide person-centered support so each individual can experience the best possible quality of life, aligns directly with Vynca's approach to advance care planning," said Mistler. "As our two companies come together, we look forward to seeing how combining technology, talent and passion can further enhance the quality of care for individuals living with serious illness."

About Vynca

Vynca enables high-quality, person-centered, goal-concordant care that reflects individuals' wishes with their serious illness management platform that incorporates virtual palliative care services, advance care planning, care coordination, symptom management, whole-person care and provider engagement. The company's comprehensive solution set empowers providers, individuals and their families to have meaningful conversations about future care preferences supported by a broad range of serious illness management services offered from a single point of trust to deliver successful value-based arrangements to healthcare organizations. With this approach, Vynca ensures that personalized end-of-life care is available for every individual, every time. To learn more about our platform, please visit www.vyncahealth.com.