The Exit · Conversations

What Happens After the Rollup?

OpenLoop’s Jon Lensing on Growth Inside a Patient Base

The OpenLoop CEO on when a platform’s existing patients are its best growth opportunity, and when a large patient database is less valuable than it looks.

A returning patient is in a medspa for an aesthetic treatment when she mentions she’s been struggling with her weight, or that her hormones feel off. The practice already has her trust. What it usually doesn’t have is a clinician who can treat either concern.

The private equity playbook for healthcare platforms rarely accounts for this moment. Sponsors grow by buying more clinics and marketing for more patients. Jon Lensing, co-founder and CEO of OpenLoop, sees another source of growth in the patients a platform already has. OpenLoop provides clinical infrastructure for more than 300 virtual healthcare brands, so Lensing hears the same requests come up across hundreds of businesses. When enough patients raise the same need, it can point to a service they already want. “Activation is better than acquisition,” he says.

Lensing’s first test is whether patients are still engaged, meaning how many interact with the business each month or quarter. A long patient list means little if those relationships have gone quiet.

Engaged patients still need a reason to get new care from that particular business. Lensing makes the point with an extreme case: a sponsor buys a group of medspas, sees how much the healthcare system spends on chronic kidney disease, and decides to chase that market. The market may be huge, but nobody books a medspa appointment hoping to talk about their kidneys. Hormones and skin, which patients already bring up, are a better place to start.

His advice for finding those questions: “Just listen to what the patients are telling you.”

A patient asking about hormone therapy doesn’t mean a medspa can start offering it. The practice needs qualified clinicians, clinical oversight, and systems for scheduling, prescriptions, follow-up, labs, and pharmacy. Lensing says companies often spot the opportunity but underestimate what it takes to build a new service line themselves.

That’s OpenLoop’s business. It supplies the clinical and operational infrastructure that lets a partner offer virtual care under its own brand.

As Lensing sees it, a buyer is paying for confidence in next year’s revenue and cash flow. Asked what would give a buyer that confidence in a new service line, he doesn’t stop at new signups. Signups show patients are willing to try something new. The second and third visits show whether they found enough value to come back, and whether they keep coming after the launch promotion ends.

He also looks at the share of patients using two or more of the platform’s services. Someone who relies on a practice for several kinds of care has more reason to stay than someone who comes in for a single treatment.

Then there’s the economics and the care itself. Does the revenue justify the cost of launching and running the service? Are patients qualifying under appropriate clinical criteria and seeing good outcomes? That second question matters to Lensing because he draws a firm line between deciding to offer a service and deciding who should receive it. A business can choose to make a service available. Whether an individual patient qualifies is a clinical decision.

Lensing’s tests help a sponsor decide whether to buy the next clinic or build on the patients it already has. If a new service line brings patients back after the promotion ends and gets them using more than one service, a buyer has something to underwrite. If it only shifts spending from one treatment to another, the platform gets bigger but not necessarily more valuable.

Jon Lensing is co-founder and CEO of OpenLoop, which he started in 2020 after medical school at the University of Iowa. He grew up in rural Iowa watching his father, the only local OB-GYN, care for families who had nowhere else to go. That gap between where care exists and where patients live is the problem OpenLoop was built to close.

Under Lensing, OpenLoop has grown to power virtual care operations nationwide, raised more than $100M, and was named to TIME’s Top HealthTech Companies (2025). Jon was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2024.