• Teladoc, an embattled telehealth company, is staking its future on a new primary-care product.
• Called Primary360, the service is meant to stave off growing competition in telehealth. 
• It has signed on 50 health plans and employers, according to data provided to Insider.

Teladoc's new primary-care business is starting to take off, according to internal data shown to Insider. 

The product, called Primary360, is Teladoc's big bet to build the next chapter of growth for a company best known for connecting patients to doctors online to treat their one-off issues, like sore throats. 

That model isn't enough to compel investors — Teladoc's stock is down by more than 70% since a year ago — in a world where health plans are building their own virtual-care services and startups like Included Health gear up to go public. Teladoc is under the added pressures of the $13.9 billion acquisition of the chronic-care company Livongo, a huge expense that the telehealth giant hasn't been able to justify to Wall Street more than a year later.

On Tuesday, the company presented its fourth-quarter earnings for 2021, and it looks like a big comeback in the stock market isn't happening anytime soon. While Teladoc's revenue for the quarter was in-line with Wall Street's expectations, the stock has seen big swings since the earnings call, as its revenue forecast for the first quarter of 2022 was "soft," SVB Leerink analysts Stephanie Davis and Joy Zhang wrote in a Wednesday note.

Still, Primary360 was a bright spot. During the call, CEO Jason Gorevic said that more than 50 health plans and employers have signed up for the young primary care offering, including several in the Fortune 500. He also emphasized that Primary360 positions Teladoc to be a strategic partner for health plans that are starting to work with patients more online.

Primary360 works on the Teladoc app, giving patients access to a care team that monitors their health over time. It acts like a central hub, and the team can pass patients into other channels — including Teladoc services and in-network providers — as needed. That puts the company in a position to build out insurers' virtual plans and break into more lucrative contracts that put it in charge of a bigger slice of employers' and health plans' spend. Then, Teladoc can take part in any savings it creates for them.

Patient enrollment in the program, which launched in October, is surpassing internal expectations by more than twofold, a Teladoc employee told Insider, speaking on condition of anonymity to share internal data. About 25% of those living with diabetes and hypertension were newly diagnosed in their Primary360 visits, Teladoc told Insider. That shows primary care can help patients before they get sicker and incur more costs. 

We got the pitch deck that Teladoc has been using to pitch Primary360 to health plans and employers. Teladoc removed financial forecasting, pricing information, and proprietary client data that the company would normally include.

This story was originally published on February 18 and has been updated with information from Teladoc's earnings call.

With Teladoc's stock down more than 70% in the past year, a lot is riding on Primary360 and similar bets that hope to make the company more central to long-term patient care.

The service includes a care team, including a primary-care physician, nurse, and medical assistant, for each patient. Patients can see their doctor over video, and for certain health issues, they can get referred to other in-network doctors outside Teladoc.

Teladoc told Insider new patients were seeing their Primary360 doctors in less than seven days on average, sooner than it usually takes to see a family provider. The initial visits are tracking at longer than 50 minutes, according to the company.

Health plans and employers pay for Primary360 with a mix of visit fees and monthly access charges. But the pricing will evolve over time to support "value-based" care, where Teladoc is financially rewarded for overseeing certain patient populations, like folks with diabetes, successfully, according to the company.

In Primary360, patients get care plans that show goals and related tasks. In one case, a patient with high blood sugar is nudged to schedule a diabetic eye exam.

Patients seem to be engaging with the new service.

CVS's Aetna, a health insurer, has seen hundreds of thousands of members sign up for Primary360 through its employer business since January 1, CVS said during an earnings call. Another insurer saw enrollment exceed expectations, and 75% of its Primary360 users are new customers for the plan, Teladoc told Insider.

Primary360 also helps patients navigate their options besides Teladoc. The care team can schedule appointments with in-network providers, ranked by an algorithm that takes into account procedure volume and experience level. That means Teladoc can refer patients to its hospital clients, too.

Teladoc is planning to add features like in-home prescriptions and labs to Primary360. It already provides itself or through partnerships vaccinations, imaging, and home-monitoring tools.

More than 50% of Primary360 members are using an additional Teladoc service, like for mental healthcare or chronic-care management, according to Teladoc.

Some of those patients were referred to the other services by Primary360 providers, who can see their hypertension and other data in patients' medical records. Others were already using a Teladoc program, then joined Primary360 when their employer or health plan added it to their bucket of offerings.

Jason Gorevic, Teladoc's CEO, is optimistic that Primary360 can expedite the company's plans to be financially accountable to keeping patients healthy. "The more we expand the scope of our clinical offering, the bigger the envelope can be," he told investors at a healthcare conference in January.

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