The company wants to make family caregiving coordination as common as paternity and maternity leave
Even before the pandemic, there was a caregiver crisis in America, but the pandemic made it worse: according to AARP, more than 21 percent of Americans provided care to an adult or child with special needs in 2020; that was a total of 53 million, up from 43.5 million in 2015.
The burden isn’t spread equally either, as 61% of caregivers are women this has a big impact on them, in particular. Between February 2020 to January 2022, 1.1 million women left the workforce, totaling 63 percent of all jobs lost during that period.
We simply are not going enough to give these people the resources they need to take care of their loved ones and also have a full time job, said Dave Jacobs, co-founder and co-CEO of Homethrive, a company that seeks to ease some of that burden by providing caregivers with additional resources and help.
On Monday, Healththrive announced a $20 million Series B round of funding led by Human Capital, along with Allianz and existing investors 7wireVentures and Pitango HealthTech, bringing its total funding to $43 million.
“Today’s workers are facing unprecedented mental health challenges from stressors, one of which is caregiving. Human resources leaders are often tasked with finding ways to keep employees engaged, productive, and happy, while also ensuring they feel included and that their work is rewarding. That’s no small job,” he said.
“Backup childcare benefits and EAPs don’t help employee caregivers get a handle on their caregiving responsibilities the way that our care coordination is proven to help.”
Homethrive’s platform, called Dari, is powered by its Care Guides, who are credentialed and experienced caregiving experts, which integrates with its digital assistant for coaching, navigation, and resources.
“We break the caregiving support mold by skillfully blending self-service digital caregiving and health support with expert human interaction to effectively and efficiently right-size care to large populations,” Jacobs explained.
Homethrive is offered nationally to employers, insurers, and affinity groups. So, for example, if someone is caring for their aging parents, while also working and caring for their children, they’d be able to access the Dari Digital Platform as an employee benefit. That means they’d be able to get 24/7 on-demand access to resources on a variety of topics, such as how to safety proof the home, or what to do after a hospital discharge. All of Homethrive’s resources are curated by its Care Guides, and users are able to chat live with them in real-time if necessary.
In addition, users have the option to work one-on-one with their own Care Guide, who will learn about them, their family, and their needs to help them come up with an action plan. That means coordinating everything from transportation to home health services to medication delivery.
“That guidance and support will reduce the work, worry, and stress for you, allowing you to be more productive at work without compromising your parents’ care,” said Jacobs.
“We support anyone and everyone who considers themselves a caregiver, whether that be for an aging parent, a sick spouse, or a child with special needs. While we do have some self-pay members, employers primarily offer Homethrive as a caregiving benefit to their teams, affinity groups offer the benefit to their membership, and insurers offer it to their beneficiaries.”
There are currently around 1 million eligible users in the company’s ecosystem, and so far it has been able to show an 80% reduction in voluntary turnover, while saving members an average of 16.4 work hours per month. It has also been able to improve employee well-being, with 96% of employees reporting significant reduction in stress, reduce the need for high-cost senior living facility care from 75% to 10%, and lower claims costs by 24%.
Homethrive plans to use the new funding to invest in its digital stack, with the goal of building out its machine-learning technology and AI to make the platform more responsive, personalized, and effective for its members. In addition, it will also go toward what the company calls “aggressive expansion with self-insured employers and insurance plans.”
“This new funding and continued support from our initial investors is affirmation that family caregiving is becoming the rule and not the exception. This funding now gives us the ammunition to grow and innovate even faster so that we can expand our reach to help even more caregivers,” said Jacobs.
The ultimate goal, he said, is to be the standard of care, and to make family caregiving coordination as common for employees as paternity and maternity leave are now.
“We think the caregiver journey is worth celebrating and we can provide the resources to make that experience as painless as possible.”
(Image source: homethrive.com)