In our latest episode of Disrupt, Home Health Care News talked to a man who helped develop them both: Dan Trigub. The current head of Uber Health came to the San Francisco-based company last year following a two-year stint at Lyft.

Subscribe to Disrupt via Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud or your favorite podcast app.

Today, Trigub — who himself has a background in the home-based care world — says home care is one of his division’s fastest growing verticals.

It’s anyone’s guess where that growth will take the $70 billion publicly traded company in the years to come. But when it comes to the health division, Trigub has his sights set on at least two areas in particular: Medicare Advantage (MA) meal delivery and driving partnerships for caregivers.

You can find Trigub’s conversation with HHCN below, edited for length and clarity.

HHCN: I want to start my diving into your background. This isn’t your first foray into home care — or in combining it with ride-hailing, for that matter. Tell me a little bit about how you got to where you are today.

Trigub: Home care is an area that’s very close to my heart.

My entire family immigrated to the U.S. from the former Soviet Union. My grandmother came here, and she was in her 90s — very ambulatory, in good health for the most part. And I was certainly a caregiver for her, along with my father.

She lived in New York City by herself when she came to the U.S., and she would never, ever leave her apartment, until maybe about once a week or so when my father and I would come visit her from New Jersey.

I always saw how transportation [and] mobility were so important to her well-being and independence — and the power that transportation could have in that equation.

Additionally, my wife’s family has been in the home care business for over 15 years here in the Bay Area. I always saw that industry from afar. I was very entrenched and got to learn a lot about it through [my father-in-law’s] experiences. Because of those experiences, I actually started my own startup in the senior care space.

I had the opportunity to join Lyft about three years ago to help grow and scale their health care operations, with a focus on elder care. Since then, I came here to Uber, where I lead Uber Health.

Since you joined Uber Health, how has that division of the business changed — whether it’s in terms of growth, focus, strategy, going public or anything else?

Even three years ago when I first started at the intersection of ride-hailing and health care, the question was: “What the heck is a ride-share company doing in health care? You’re just taking a millenial to a bar on a Friday night, and that’s what you’re used for.”

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. What Uber Health can do for our aging, low-income, at-risk population is tremendous. Care begins with getting to the care.

When we look at social determinants of health and, now, health plans [doing] everything from meal delivery to grocery delivery to even paying for somebody to go to church or to a social activity, transportation is at the core of all of that.

We really approached this by saying, “What does a $70 billion public technology company need to do to be able to build a health care organization within its structure?”

That came down to making sure we built it right from day one.We had to make sure not only that it was compliant, but that it met the needs of our partners, and I think we’ve done a lot of that.

Uber Health has now been live for over a year. It’s been in development for over two years, and it’s an exciting time for us to continue to grow and scale our business.

You’ve said that Uber has more than 1,000 partners in the health space. Can you tell me how many of those are home-based care providers and where they fit into the equation?

We don’t break down our revenue by any specific segment.

Today … we have many home care partners who see benefits to their day-to-day operations by having us as a solution for them. This certainly is a growing area of focus and a growing vertical within our overall business.

We want good partners. As long as they’re a good standing business, we want to work with them.

Can you highlight any home-based care relationships that you’re especially excited about?

One I love talking about … is an organization called 123 Home Care. 123 Home Care has really leaned into their relationship with Uber Health. They’ve actually created a solution that they call 123 Easy Rides. They have their own website and platform where their customers can go to learn more.

At the core of it, 123 Home Care is not a transportation company. That’s not their core offering, but they’ve seen and embraced how transportation is so important to their customers and their clients.

Another example is 24 Hour Home Care. They’ve really leaned into providing higher levels of service, higher quality care to their customers and leveraging transportation and Uber Health to empower their customers to be more independent … [and] to go where and when they need.

God forbid a caregiver uses their own vehicle [and] gets into an accident. There’s certain insurance they’re required to have, [but] many of them don’t have it. Now they can lean in and leverage Uber Health to allow their caregivers to provide transportation in an Uber vehicle.

Now what about results? Some people doubt that ride-share can make a meaningful impact on addressing social determinants of health like missed medical appointments. For example, a study that came out of Penn Medicine found that ridesharing partnerships didn’t really change the rate of missed medical appointments.

Let’s not forget about caregivers. Caregivers call all the time: “My car broke down. I can’t get to my appointment. I’ve got to cancel. What do I do?”

Now [home-based care providers] can leverage this to help their caregivers be more efficient, be more productive [and] get to their appointments.

The other thing is we’ve seen caregivers can do a much better job. They can sit in the back seat, attend to their client, focus on them and not have to focus on all the headaches that come with vehicle ownership.

That’s just on the caregiver side.

On the flipside with clients, there was just recently a study published by Boston Medical Center, one of our large health system partners. We reduced costs for the hospital and their operations. We reduced no-shows and missed appointments, and we ultimately increased patient satisfaction.

There was that one study that you allude to … but I think it was one small sample, one small data set [and] a population where it might not have made as much sense for them.

But certainly, for our elderly, low-income, at-risk populations I feel confident that transportation is critical.

We’ve talked before about Medicare Advantage and how that’s an area of interest for your team. In fact, you have a dedicated team talking to payers and looking to build partnerships. Can you give us any updates on how developing those partnerships is going?

There’s been a lot of growth and a lot of excitement on the Medicare Advantage side. We haven’t publicly announced any direct partnerships there, but stay tuned.

We’re really excited by MA plans and guidance from CMS pushing for transportation and being able to cover non-emergency medical transportation.

Many MA plans have guidance from CMS around being able to cover grocery and meal delivery, as well. Uber today has the largest meal-delivery platform in the world outside of China with Uber Eats.

We think getting a hot, healthy meal to someone in a food dessert is an area we can lean into with MA plans — as well as commercial payers, where there’s a lot of appetite there as well.

If you had to make a bold prediction for Uber Health a year from now, where will it be?

The possibilities are endless.

We can lean into this platform for health: that includes meal delivery, pharmaceutical delivery and durable medical equipment delivery. Just like Amazon first started with books but now does quite a breadth of services, we started as a ride service but the future is endless.

In the home care vertical specifically, it’s really: How do we also embed those products and services for our home care agencies? They may be interested in looking at things like meal delivery. We’ve seen that.

Then also helping provide better solutions for their caregivers and staff. Caregivers are typically hourly employees who are overworked and underpaid, [so] looking at extra sources of income is really important to them. Are there opportunities to help them become even driver partners on the Uber network? We’ve seen some interest there from our home care partners and network.

The post Uber Health Eyes Meal Delivery, Caregiver-Driving Partnerships appeared first on Home Health Care News.

To earn a spot on the 2019 Inc. 5000 list, released earlier this month, companies had to be privately owned, U.S.-based and independent, meaning they couldn’t be a subsidiary or division of another company.

Among the several in-home care companies to make the list was Home Health Companions, a Dallas-based licensed home health provider that offers in-home companion and caregiver services, private duty nursing and aging life care services.

Founded in 2011, the company employed 24 people five years ago; it currently employs 80. In 2018, Home Health Companions brought in about $3.1 million in revenue.

Company leadership attributes some of its success to its private-pay model, which it sees as more stable than Medicare or Medicaid.

“The benefit for us is that we work directly with our client,” Lisa Shardon, president of Home Health Companions, told Home Health Care News. “We have to adhere to the standards of licensing in Texas, but our model is that we get paid by our clients, so it’s based on client need.”

Still, working within the private-pay space has its challenges as well.

Home Health Companions has to stay on top of creating new programs and specialized services that will attract new clients while accommodate existing ones, according to Shardon.

One of the ways the company did this was by implementing home health care in its lines of business back in 2014.

“We started as a caregiving company only, and then our clients wanted additional services and that’s where the home health component came from,” she said. “Our clients started out almost like the life cycle of our business, only needing personal assistance services maybe three times a week. Then, as our clients age in place, they need more services.”

Additionally, Home Health Companions credits partnerships as one of the main drivers of its growth, though Shardon declined to go into details. The company’s three-year growth rate in 2018 was 110%, according to Inc.

“We looked where we could have some partnerships,” Shardon said. “We have partnerships with communities and other agencies, where caregiving is not necessarily their primary business. So they partner with us to do their caregiving and sometimes their supplemental staffing.”

In addition to Home Health Companions, other in-home care providers to make the Inc. 5000 list included HealthFlex Home Health Services, 123 Home Care, Senior Solutions Home Care, Blossom Ridge Home Health, Georgetown Home Care, Capitol Home Health, AMR Care Group and California CareGivers Home Healthcare. Several larger, more established providers made the list as well, including 24 Hour Home Care and FirstLight HomeCare.

“[Acting on] our employee feedback has also been very important in terms of making our company successful,” Shardon said.

Moving forward, Home Health Companions is looking into innovative ways to incorporate technology into the business.

“We are using an integrated technology system; it allows clients to look at what the caregiver is documenting in real-time,” Shardon said. “Our clients like that, so we will probably do more of that in the future. We would like to be able to have three-way conversations with the client, caregiver and supervisor. That is something that we want to get implemented.”

The post Home Health Companions Among Fastest-Growing Private Companies appeared first on Home Health Care News.