Digital health · Nutrition care
Nourish
A telehealth company that bills health insurance for visits with registered dietitians. Four years old, $215 million raised, and a clinician network it says grew from fifty people to more than ten thousand.
The benefit almost nobody used
Most Americans with health insurance can already see a registered dietitian and pay nothing for it. Almost none of them do.
Nourish is a company built in the space between those two sentences. A patient enters an insurance card on a website, is matched to a dietitian licensed in their state, and meets on video. Nourish verifies the benefit, files the claim and collects from the insurer. It says 94 percent of its patients pay nothing out of pocket.
The statistic it repeats in nearly every announcement is not about its own growth. It is that “fewer than 1% of eligible Americans use their covered benefits” for nutrition care. Moving that number is the thesis.
Why the benefit sat unused
Medicare has paid for medical nutrition therapy since 2002, but narrowly. Part B covers it only for people with diabetes or kidney disease, or a kidney transplant in the last 36 months, and only on a doctor’s referral: three hours in the first calendar year and up to two hours a year after. Commercial plans followed Medicare into the benefit, each on its own terms.
The coverage existed. The supply did not. A dietitian has to be credentialed separately by each insurer, a committee review that can run 90 days per payer, and can generally only see patients in states where they hold a license, so a national practice means a stack of applications and renewals. Faced with that, most dietitians in private practice took cash. Nourish took the paperwork instead: it holds the payer contracts, credentials clinicians into them, and employs the dietitians rather than contracting them.
Three friends and a billing problem
Aidan Dewar and Sam Perkins were childhood friends. Dewar had years of migraines, Perkins had gastrointestinal trouble, and both say conventional care did little until they worked with a dietitian. Perkins brought in Stephanie Liu, a friend from Princeton, as third co-founder and chief technology officer. Dewar became chief executive, Perkins president and chief operating officer.
They launched in November 2021, out of Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch. The company’s organization NPI was registered on July 28, 2022, signed by David Samuel Perkins as chief operations officer, with a taxonomy of Dietitian, Registered and a practice location in Austin, Texas. The health record endpoint listed on that registration was SimplePractice, off the shelf software. The in-house system the company now markets did not exist yet.
Fifty dietitians to ten thousand
In January 2023, alongside an $8 million seed round led by Thrive Capital, Dewar told TechCrunch the company employed 50 dietitians and had a waitlist of more than 400. Total funding was $9.3 million.
A $35 million Series A led by Index Ventures followed in March 2024, with a plan to pass 1,000 dietitians by year end, described as a twentyfold increase. In April 2025 a $70 million Series B led by J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners put the count above 3,000; four people with knowledge of the round told Business Insider it valued the company above $1 billion. In February 2026 a joint release with Community Health Network in Indiana said over 6,000. Three months later the $100 million Series C led by Menlo Ventures said over 10,000, and Axios reported a $1.75 billion valuation.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Organization NPI | NPI 1558097824, NOURISH, INC., enumerated Jul 28, 2022. Taxonomy Dietitian, Registered (133V00000X), group type Multi-Specialty Group. Authorized official David Samuel Perkins, Chief Operations Officer. | Public record |
| Medicare scope | Part B pays for medical nutrition therapy only with diabetes, kidney disease or a kidney transplant in the last 36 months, on referral, capped at three hours the first year and two a year after. | Public record |
| Payer network | The company FAQ lists Blue Cross Blue Shield and affiliates, UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Cigna, Devoted Health and Medicare. No contract with any payer is public. | Company-stated |
| Medicaid | The April 2025 Series B release says Nourish partners with national commercial, Medicare and Medicaid plans, and its Series A lead investor wrote the same. The FAQ read in September 2026 says “Medicaid is not accepted at this time.” | Differs from company FAQ |
| Network size | 50 dietitians (Jan 2023); hundreds (Mar 2024); 3,000+ (Apr 2025); over 6,000 (Feb 20, 2026); over 10,000 (May 19, 2026). The site read in September 2026 says 9,000+ on the home page and 10,000+ on the about page. | Figures disagree |
| Employment model | A Dietitian Success Center survey published Sep 11, 2025 drew 43 responses on Nourish. All reported W-2 employment, a flat rate of roughly $50 to $78 per 55 minute session, no pay for charting, and benefits including health coverage, PTO, a 401(k) match and license fee reimbursement. 35 would recommend it, 2 would not. | Independent survey |
| Clinical outcomes | The May 2026 release reports a 1.3 point A1C reduction, a 31 point LDL reduction, a 23 point systolic blood pressure reduction and over $2,000 a year per patient in plan savings. A March 2026 white paper reports 68 percent of its GLP-1 patients still on medication at six months against a 46 percent benchmark. All are company analyses of company patients. | Company-stated |
| Peer review | Fierce Healthcare called the GLP-1 work a “2024 peer-reviewed analysis”. The company page describes the same result as a white paper based on a survey of more than 3,700 patients. A PubMed search on Sep 23, 2026 found no paper naming the company. | Differs from the company page |
| Named customers | Community Health Network in Indiana announced an integration across seven specialties on Feb 20, 2026. Tia announced a partnership in February 2025, Wisp in 2024. One Medical, Texas Oncology and Dell Medical Center were named as referral partners in 2024. | Partner-stated |
| Litigation | Podraza et al v. Nourish, Inc., No. 3:25-cv-50356, N.D. Illinois. Filed August 2025 for a proposed class of more than 10,000 patients over website trackers said to have sent appointment data to Google. On Apr 20, 2026 the court let federal Wiretap Act and California privacy claims proceed and dismissed several others. | Public record |
| Consumer complaints | The Better Business Bureau profile records 15 complaints in three years, 12 closed in the last twelve months, several about claim coding and whether the billing provider was in network. The business is not BBB accredited. | Public record |
| SEC filings | No Form D, and no filing of any kind naming Nourish, Inc., appears in EDGAR as of Sep 23, 2026, across four announced priced rounds. | Not found |
Read plainly: the operating record is real and unusually legible for a private company. There is a group NPI, an employment model corroborated by the dietitians working under it, named health system customers, and a benefit whose limits are set by public rules anyone can read. What is missing is independently reviewed evidence of outcomes. Every clinical number the company publishes is its own look at its own patients, and one outlet has already called a company white paper peer reviewed when the company does not.
What to watch
- Whether the network counts converge. Over 6,000, then 9,000, then 10,000 inside seven months is a wide band for a headline metric.
- Any peer reviewed publication carrying the company name, or a registered study.
- The Podraza docket, now past the pleading stage on two claims.
- Whether Medicaid moves from the press releases onto the coverage page.
In their words
“94% of our patients are fully covered by insurance and pay nothing out of pocket. Most of the rest just have a small co-pay.”
Aidan Dewar, co-founder and CEO, to TechCrunch, 2023 · Independent
“The fact that you can feel better by eating better, I think, is uncontroversial and very intuitive to most people,”
Aidan Dewar, to Fierce Healthcare, 2025 · Independent
“It’s just really attractive to dietitians, the ability to have benefits,”
Aidan Dewar, on the W-2 model, Fierce Healthcare, 2025 · Independent
“They’re the stars of the show, and we want to treat them as such,”
Aidan Dewar, to Business Insider, 2025 · Independent
“Our goal is to create a win-win-win for patients, providers, and payers,”
Sam Perkins, co-founder, President and COO, Series A release, 2024 · Company release
“Nourish wants to help build a healthcare system that prioritizes preventative care and meets patients where they are through digital-first, user-friendly technology and clinical support,”
Stephanie Liu, co-founder and CTO, Series A release, 2024 · Company release
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordNPPES entry, NPI 1558097824, NOURISH, INC.
- Public recordMedical nutrition therapy services coverage page
- Public recordNational Coverage Determination 180.1
- Public recordEDGAR full text and company search
- Public recordPodraza et al v. Nourish, Inc., No. 3:25-cv-50356
- Public recordComplaints profile for Nourish
- IndependentNourish Stuck With Wiretap Claim Over Use of Google Web Tracker
- IndependentWith a focus on patients with chronic illness, Nourish hopes to help Americans eat better
- IndependentNutrition counseling startup Nourish clinches $70M to expand services
- IndependentNutrition startup Nourish lands over $1 billion valuation
- IndependentNourish valued at $1.75B after $100M Series C raise
- IndependentDietitian perspectives on working for telehealth startups
- CompanySeries A, Series B and Series C funding releases
- CompanyLaunch post and company profile
- CompanyInsurance FAQ, about page and become a dietitian page
- CompanyGLP-1 research and persistence white paper summaries
- PartnerCommunity Health Network Partners with Nourish
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
