Family building benefits are becoming increasingly more important for employers. About 40% of U.S. organizations offered fertility benefits in 2022, up from 30% in 2020, according to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.
Recognizing the growing demand, Quantum Health is now working with Kindbody, a fertility clinic network and family-building benefits provider, the companies announced last week. Dublin, Ohio-based Quantum Health is a navigation and care coordination company for self-insured employers. New York City-based Kindbody offers virtual, in-person and home-based reproductive care. Its services include in-vitro fertilization, egg freezing, LGBTQ+ family building, gynecology and other services.
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Kindbody’s solution will be offered through Quantum Health’s Comprehensive Care Solutions platform, which offers a selection of benefits solutions that the company’s more than 500 employer clients can choose to contract with. The solutions are vetted by Quantum based on factors like clinical outcomes, cost savings and security. Other solutions on the platform include Headspace and Teladoc Health for mental health services, Hinge Health and Sword for musculoskeletal services and KidneyLink for kidney disease support. The platform is meant to help employers during a time when many are struggling with point solution fatigue and balancing numerous healthcare vendors.
If employees are interacting with Quantum Health’s platform and “an insight pops up that says you’re looking at providers that happen to fall into that category of family building, family planning, our digital assets will prompt you and say, ‘Remember, you have Kindbody. Let us know if you need help with that or click the button to go directly to them,’” said Shannon Skaggs, president of Quantum Health, in an interview.
In the partnership, there’s a revenue share between the organizations based on meeting engagement, member experience and utilization metrics.
Kindbody is the second fertility solution on the Comprehensive Care Solutions platform. Progyny — which provides family-building support through its network of providers, concierge services and pharmacy services — joined the platform last month. Progyny was founded by Gina Bartasi, who later went on to create Kindbody. However, Kindbody differs from Progyny (as well as other family building platforms like Carrot Fertility and Maven Clinic) by both delivering care directly through its own clinics and managing employers’ family building benefits. Other companies mostly just focus on the latter rather than running their own clinics.
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“Progyny was first to market and really helped create the need and the awareness in the space about increasing accessibility to family building and fertility,” Taryn Branca, chief revenue officer of Kindbody, said in an interview. “What Kindbody is doing is really taking it to what we think is a different level in being clinically-led, clinically-focused with reproductive endocrinologists on staff. … While we provide support and navigation, we provide that clinical level of care as well.”
Currently, about one in six adults struggle with infertility, yet many aren’t able to access needed services due to issues like cost. Employees are now expecting support from their employers, and this partnership aims to address that, Branca said.
“I think the growing demand is really around diversity, equity and inclusion, making sure that all people have the ability to build a family in whatever way they choose,” Branca said. “I think employees are speaking up. … It’s no longer just for the top 1% of the population. People are expecting this to be covered and expecting it to be enough coverage to actually build a family.”
Photo:boonchai wedmakawand, Getty Images
