Exclusive: Los Angeles startup Heal expands health and wellness services for children and new mothers

Los Angeles-startup Heal is working on widening its slate of services for children and new mothers as it looks to grow its network of on-demand house call physicians into areas of particular need.

Heal, which has raised more than $70 million from investors, is active in California, Washington, D.C. and Virginia and has delivered more than 80,000 house calls since its founding in 2014.

The company’s services for children and babies are currently available in parts of California and will be rolling out nationally to the rest of Heal’s geographic footprint as a major focus for 2019.

Heal Co-founder and chief medical officer Dr. Renee Dua said the company’s strategy was always to focus on two populations where house calls could make the most impact: seniors and children.

While the process of working with the senior population means wading through complex Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement policy, there’s not the same barriers in providing care to children.

Heal’s thesis is that in using the house call model, physicians are able to more accurately observe environmental factors or patterns that can impact a young child’s health, but may be difficult to gauge in a clinical setting.

Dua underscored the benefits of the company’s well baby services through her personal experience caring for her own newborn child.

“One of the most fascinating things about this baby is that since her pediatrician is through Heal, he brings the scale, he sees how we mix formula and he can see how I feed her at home,” Dua said. “It really gives him a unique perspective on how we manage as a family and how that affects her care.”

According to Dua, a major issue for young mothers is often the transition from the hospital to the home after the birth of a child which leave many women unprepared or unable to effectively provide care for their newborn. One example is the fact that a woman can’t drive after a C-Section, meaning that making appointments and meeting with specialists can be difficult.

Much of the new services have been developed in response to user feedback and the experiences of Heal physicians as they visit and treat patients.

Dua relayed a story where she was conducting a home visit for a new mother who’s initial complaint was for a viral injection. After speaking with her, however, Dua realized that the patient was suffering from postpartum depression due to her feelings of isolation after having her baby.

According to Dua, the idea is to provide “full scope care” spanning pre-birth services like lactation consulting, to vaccinations and immunizations and on through behavioral and sexual health as the child gets older.

“These are things that children whether they’re just before adolescence or during adolescence are dealing with now,” Dua said. “We go on-site to schools learn about how children are managing their stress and managing personal relationships and we try to spend time to help them solve some of those challenging problems.”

The growing service offerings for babies and young children has its roots in the origin story of Heal itself, which was founded by Dua and her husband Nick Desai after the struggle that they had trying to get care in for their own children.

“We would go to children’s hospitals and we’d look around and there were folks there who would have to take the bus who don’t speak English, who may be losing their job to take care of their kids,” Dua said.

“And we thought long and hard about how blessed we are, how much of everything we have and how even we couldn’t make it work.”

Photo: metinkiyak, Getty images