Fresh Off New Funding Round, PBM SmithRx Targets ‘Underserved’ Market

January 25

Last year, as the country’s three dominant PBMs faced an unprecedented amount of scrutiny, smaller firms saw an opportunity to step into the spotlight. Thus, they founded Transparency-Rx, a coalition of PBMs with “transparent” business models and a shared goal of pushing for the reform their larger rivals were resisting.

One of the members of that new coalition, SmithRx, announced on Jan. 23 that it closed a $60 million Series C financing round led by the health care venture capital firm Venrock. The latest funding infusion, which builds on a $20 million Series B round raised in 2022, positions SmithRx to continue fixing a “broken” pharmacy pricing system, according to its founder and CEO, Jake Frenz.

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Radar on Drug Benefits

Leslie Small

Leslie has been working in journalism since 2009 and reporting on the health care industry since 2014. She has covered the many ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the failed health insurer mega-mergers, and hundreds of other storylines spanning subjects such as Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage, employer-sponsored insurance, and prescription drug coverage. As the managing editor of Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits, she writes and edits for both publications while overseeing a small team of reporters who also focus on the managed care sector. Before joining AIS Health, she was a senior editor for the e-newsletter Fierce Health Payer, and she started her career as a copy editor at multiple local newspapers. She graduated with a dual degree in journalism and political science from Penn State University.