Thrive Therapies, a technology-enabled pediatric healthcare company, has raised $7.7 million in funding to expand its school-based healthcare services, strengthen its clinical teams and develop its clinical intelligence platform.
The funding round was led by LiveOak Ventures, with participation from Activate Venture Partners and the Charter School Growth Fund.
The company plans to use the fresh capital to enter new markets, hire more healthcare professionals and advance Thrive Clinical, its platform for tracking therapy outcomes and supporting clinical decision-making.
Thrive Therapies Provides Healthcare Services in Schools
Thrive Therapies provides therapy, evaluations and behavioral health services to children with disabilities through schools and school districts. The company currently works with more than 200 schools and districts across six US states: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.
Its services include speech-language therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, school psychology and behavioral healthcare.
School districts across the US face a shortage of qualified healthcare professionals, making it difficult to provide the support children with disabilities need. Districts also face administrative challenges when billing Medicaid for eligible healthcare services.
Thrive addresses these issues by deploying its own clinicians in schools to work directly with students, teachers and families. The company also helps districts manage Medicaid reimbursement and track student progress.
“I’ve been on every side of this. I ran a school system that paid for these services, I spent years researching whether they worked, and I was a child whose disability was identified late,” said Dr. Kristin McGraner, founder and CEO of Thrive Therapies. “The constant was that nobody could tell us precisely what a child needed, early enough to matter. That’s what we built Thrive to fix.”
“Dr. Kristin McGraner and the team at Thrive bring a rare combination of education and clinical leadership and proprietary technology to serve both children and the schools that support them,” said Krishna Srinivasan, board member and founding partner, LiveOak Ventures. “Thrive has already shown strong traction across multiple regions, and it signals a massive shift in how special education services are delivered, measured and paid for.”
Thrive Clinical Uses Data to Track Therapy Outcomes
Thrive’s clinical intelligence platform, Thrive Clinical, helps schools monitor therapy outcomes and maintain records of students’ progress.
According to the company, the platform has documented more than 18,000 therapy sessions and provides real-time reporting, allowing schools to track progress more frequently than traditional annual assessments.
The same clinical records can also support Medicaid reimbursement claims, helping school districts recover eligible costs while reducing administrative work for clinicians.
By reducing paperwork and improving access to clinical data, Thrive aims to give healthcare professionals more time to focus on students and maintain continuity of care.
Company Reports Positive Student Outcomes
Thrive Therapies said more than 85% of students across its school systems met their annual Individualised Education Program (IEP) goals.
The company also reported that 46% of students achieved their goals and no longer required services, compared with a cited national average of approximately 8%.
These outcomes could help schools direct clinical resources towards students who continue to need support. However, the reported figures are company-provided results and may not be directly comparable with national averages without further details about the populations and measurement methods.
Thrive operates under multi-year contracts with public school districts across its six existing states, with additional deployments underway.
Funding to Support Expansion and Clinical Technology
The latest funding will help Thrive expand its geographic reach, recruit additional clinicians and improve its technology platform.
The company aims to address two major challenges facing school-based healthcare: limited access to qualified professionals and the administrative burden associated with delivering and reimbursing care.
Thrive Therapies was founded by McGraner, who previously spent 11 years as founder and CEO of STEM Preparatory Academy in Tennessee. She also led federally funded research teams at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, studying education policy and outcomes for students with diverse needs.
With the new investment, Thrive plans to expand its services and technology to help more school districts deliver healthcare to children with disabilities while improving clinical reporting and reimbursement processes.
