Basalt Health, a Nashville company that uses AI to process patient referrals into post-acute care, raised a $20m Series A on 24 September 2026. Returning investor NEA led the round.
Existing investors Frist Cressey Ventures and 25m Health, the healthtech venture studio of 25madison, also took part. The company said the round brings its total capital raised to about $24.5m. It did not disclose a valuation.
Basalt said it would use the money to extend its platform from admissions into discharge and payer workflows, and to grow its sales, marketing, implementation and engineering teams.
“Case managers are still sending 70-page packets and waiting for responses, while patients remain stranded in hospital beds. Basalt turns that uncertainty into fast, defensible decisions. This funding gives us the power to transform one of healthcare’s most stubbornly inefficient systems.”Ben Hackett, Founder and CEO, Basalt Health
What Basalt Health does
When hospital patients move to post-acute care, such as rehabilitation or skilled nursing, case managers often send long clinical packets by fax to several facilities and wait for replies. Basalt said about 14 million patients enter post-acute care each year and that a typical placement involves packets sent to 6.6 facilities.
The company said the resulting delays and poor matches between patients and facilities contribute to an estimated $17bn a year in avoidable readmission costs. Hospitals also lose capacity while patients wait in beds for a placement to be confirmed.
Basalt reads each referral as it arrives, whether by fax, portal or direct integration with an electronic medical record, and checks it against a facility's clinical criteria. It then supports the steps that follow, including admissions, benefits checks and prior authorisations.
At Lifepoint Health, where Basalt has been live since its seed round in 2025, the company said median chart processing time fell from 8.5 minutes to 1.2 minutes, a reduction of 86%.
Where the platform is going
Basalt is being implemented in 49 additional Lifepoint markets by the end of 2026. It is also scaling to 62 ScionHealth hospitals by the end of the year, where it will handle every incoming referral across a network of more than 6,000 practitioners. Together that makes 111 markets.
Al Smith, chief information officer of Lifepoint Health, said the platform fits into existing clinical and operational workflows. Sarah Stuart, senior vice president of growth and transformation at ScionHealth, said it helped her teams work faster and make better-informed decisions.
HIT Consultant reported that the next stage of the product roadmap covers discharge planning in acute hospitals and payer prior authorisation workflows.
Who invested
Blake Wu, a partner at NEA and a Basalt board member, said the platform was becoming essential infrastructure for care teams. Merrill Anovick, a general partner at 25madison and a board member, said the team had made AI reliable on the documents healthcare runs on.
Frist Cressey Ventures, founded by former US Senate majority leader Bill Frist and Bryan Cressey, is a healthcare venture firm that says it manages $846m. 25madison, which is backed by Apollo Global Management, runs 25m Health as its Nashville healthtech venture studio and counts Basalt among the more than 20 companies it has built or backed.
Ben Hackett founded Basalt in 2024 after nearly a decade at Accolade. He said the funding would help the company change one of healthcare's most inefficient systems. Basalt did not disclose its headcount.
Company website: basalt.health