Honor, a company that is trying to re-invent the way seniors are cared for at home through an online concierge care platform has moved out of the Beta stage and is making its service available to San Francisco this week. To support the move it’s launching a 10-city push that will provide a total of $1 million worth of vouchers for its service — $100,000 per city, starting with San Francisco. It’s making the announcement at the White House Conference on Aging today.
In a phone interview with MedCity News, CEO Seth Sternberg said it was interested in using technology to make caregiver support easier to manage, more efficient and more affordable to help people stay in their homes. He bemoaned what he views as the lack of innovation in the professional caregiving space and sees Honor’s platform as a way to change that.
Although it plans to be in 10 cities, Sternberg declined to identify which cities, for now.
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A statement from the company’s blog to support the initiative read:
“Entrepreneurs have found it difficult to innovate in the senior space, and investors have not poured in enough dollars because of long-held misperceptions about older adults’ abilities to adopt and use technology. This needs to change. The world’s aging parents need more people to dream bigger and bolder. Honor took $20 million in investment to remake in-home care with technology that focuses on emotional health, safety, security and increased communication between care providers, care recipients, and their families. We urge others to invest their ideas and funding similarly.”
It provides an app that customers can use to book and manage appointments and also serves as a communication tool between customers and their “care pros”. Initially, a care assessor makes a visit to identify fall risks and other potential problems. They work with seniors and their families to set up a care plan that’s intended to fit their needs. Although Sternberg explained that many professional caregiver agencies require a minimum daily commitment of 3-4 hours, Honor is more flexible and lets people book caregivers for an hour at a time. At $15 per hour, it also pays more than the typical $9.50 hourly rate.
He pointed out that despite the fact that it’s an out-of-pocket service, few people have longterm care insurance anyway, so it’s service provides a useful way to provide assistance for basic tasks such as seeing a doctor, shopping, or toileting.
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For the caregivers who have seen its platform, Sternberg noted, one thing they were struck by was a component that makes it easy for workers to inform Honor when they’re sick. Why should that be so interesting? Sternberg said it’s because most agencies are so understaffed they expect them to work, even when they’re sick, which is kind of troubling when you think about the vulnerable seniors can be to infection.
The company takes pride in its vetting process which means it has a 5 percent acceptance rate for caregivers. It does deep background checks and does a through assessment test and interview.
Most of the management team are steeped in technology and startups. Sternberg previously was product management director for Google+ after Google acquired his social media business Meebo. Shruti Kothari, on the other hand, was a practice leader and principal consultant for Kaiser Permanente and became a care officer at Honor before taking on the role of Director of Partnerships. Sternberg said it has spoken with “a ton” of people across medicine and healthcare and although it has no formal advisory board for the doctors it talks to frequently, it “will build some of that muscle in-house.”
Sternberg added that it is eventually interested in collaborating with other startups in this sector. Investor Mark Andreessen invested $20 million in the company, which Sternberg takes as an encouraging sign for other entrepreneurs serving the needs of seniors.
Although many of the startups and growth stage companies devoted to senior care have focused on medication adherence or remote monitoring, an increasing number are devoted to things like matchmaking seniors with caregivers such as CareLinx, driving customers to a doctor’s appointment, or providing a place to stay on a short-term basis in the style of Airbnb, such as Room2Care.
