Babylon accounts cast doubt on future of GP at Hand

[Northerner]

Babylon Healthcare, the company behind the GP At Hand service, needs continuing injections of cash from parent company Babylon Holdings.

However, annual accounts for Babylon Healthcare published this month reveal doubts about whether Babylon Holdings is a going concern - and said there was 'no certainty' that it 'will be able to provide the financial support which [Babylon Healthcare's] forecasts indicate is required'.

In its annual report Babylon Healthcare reported net assets of £3.5m, £1.3m in profit and operating cash outflows of £332,000 as at 31 December 2021.

GP at Hand​

But the report said that 'the majority of the company’s assets relate to amounts due' from its parent company and that Babylon Healthcare is 'reliant on financial support from its immediate parent company, Babylon Holdings Limited'. It said Babylon Holdings needs 'injections of further investment capital' and believes it will be able to raise this - but that there is 'no assurance' this will be possible.

Babylon accounts cast doubt on future of GP at Hand

NHS GP services for more than 100,000 patients registered with the controversial GP at Hand service could be at risk amid doubts over the finances behind provider Babylon Healthcare.

www.gponline.com

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[Eddy Edson]

Two midlands NHS trusts end partnerships with Babylon

The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust have both ended their partnerships with Babylon.

www.digitalhealth.net

Two NHS trusts have confirmed they will be ending their partnership with health tech company Babylon.

Venture-backed telehealth companies have been imploding over the last few months. Generally the business models suck.

Yes, crappy health systems/insurers will sign deals if they mean they can pretend to maintain care while cutting costs - but no, having a digital platform doesn't mean you can effortlessly scale customer acuqisition costs and operating expenses, because you still need actual doctors and other HCP's in there somewhere, and they don't scale.

In the UK, Babylon did fee-for-service deals at rates with no apparent prospect of achieiving profitability, as far as I can see. The purpose perhaps was to leverage the endorsement etc from these into doing value-based care deals in the US, the apparent main target market, which maybe have some hope of achieving sensible economics - but no evidence so far that they do. Anyway, it seems like maybe its now time for them to ditch the UK incubation-cocoon.

Between Q1 2021 and Q2 2022 Babylon increased global care revenue by USD $219M while the costs of delviering this + claims increased by USD $236M. That doesn't look like good marginal economics.

You probably don't really want to be relying for care on a commercial outfit which sees you as an incremental loss generator ...

Anyway, no big surprise that Babylon stock is down 90%+ in the US since it listed last year.