UberHealth: Eldercare with Empathy

It looks like the service is pretty cheap (US). How do you provide humans in person at a decent margin? Also, how do you handle this logistically in terms of serving patients in person, dealing with calls, and continuity of care?

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12yr ago

Maker

@pt Right now we are operational in India. It is affordable for any middle class person here as well. We are paying above market salaries to our carebuddies and still have good margins. We believe we can always keep our service price affordable for large number of people One reason is - we have multiple sources of revenue. 1. monthly subscription 2. in-person services 3. referral fee second reason is - we are optimizing the carebuddy usage and using technology+human touch, which helps us serve more people. logistics - each carebuddy's time is divided into calls and In-person visits. We ensure they are not burdened. Whenever the patient or their family wants a doctor visit, we give them best available options. they choose one and we book appointment, on the scheduled time, carebuddy goes to elderly's home, calls a cab and goes with them to the doctor. He sits with them, gets all things done, collects reports and also any lab tests or medicine if needed. he then drops them back home and shares all updates with the family. Carebuddy ensures elderly feel dignified and we treat them like we would treat our own parents, with certain boundaries

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12yr ago

Maker

@pt Right now we are operational in India. It is affordable for any middle class person here as well. We are paying above market salaries to our carebuddies and still have good margins. We believe we can always keep our service price affordable for large number of people One reason is - we have multiple sources of revenue. 1. monthly subscription 2. in-person services 3. referral fee second reason is - we are optimizing the carebuddy usage and using technology+human touch, which helps us serve more people. logistics - each carebuddy's time is divided into calls and In-person visits. We ensure they are not burdened. Whenever the patient or their family wants a doctor visit, we give them best available options. they choose one and we book appointment, on the scheduled time, carebuddy goes to elderly's home, calls a cab and goes with them to the doctor. He sits with them, gets all things done, collects reports and also any lab tests or medicine if needed. he then drops them back home and shares all updates with the family. Carebuddy ensures elderly feel dignified and we treat them like we would treat our own parents, with certain boundaries

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12yr ago

Maker

We are 3 college friends, all lived away from home for work/education. There was no easy way to stay updated about parents health and to ensure they were getting best care. So when we did not find any solution, we started UberHealth. UberHealth helps people busy/living away from parents to manage their parents healthcare and stay updated and assured about their health.

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12yr ago

The Twenty Minute VC

It looks like the service is pretty cheap (US). How do you provide humans in person at a decent margin? Also, how do you handle this logistically in terms of serving patients in person, dealing with calls, and continuity of care?

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12yr ago

Maker

@pt, we contact elderly by phone as most dont use smartphone and they prefer to talk over phone and discuss their problems. We listen to them with patience as thats all they are looking for at times. Their families love us, as we are providing something which was a huge need and there were no alternatives available. We understand them as we have been in their situation as well. We have been getting lot of "word of mouth" publicity

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12yr ago

The Twenty Minute VC

How does the app assist the elderly parent, and what is the experience of the adult child/family?

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12yr ago

Maker

@pt we contact elderly by phone as most dont use smartphone and they prefer to talk over phone and discuss their problems. We listen to them with patience as thats all they are looking for at times. When needed, the carebuddy goes with them and stays with them for doctor visits Their families love us, as we are providing something which was a huge need and there were no alternatives available. We understand them as we have been in their situation as well. We have been getting lot of "word of mouth" publicity

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12yr ago

Maker

@pt, we contact elderly by phone as most dont use smartphone and they prefer to talk over phone and discuss their problems. We listen to them with patience as thats all they are looking for at times. When needed, the carebuddy goes with them and stays with them for doctor visits Their families love us, as we are providing something which was a huge need and there were no alternatives available. We understand them as we have been in their situation as well. We have been getting lot of "word of mouth" publicity

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12yr ago

How do you control costs of your carebuddies, in terms of time-tracking?

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12yr ago

Maker

@umarkcanada, I did not get the question fully. Could you be more elaborate? I will try to answer from what I understood. for in-person services, we offer upto 4 hrs service and 4-8 hrs service as it usually takes time for doctor/hospital visit. We are soon launching an app which will track Carebuddy's whereabouts and also what he/she is doing currently (when at work)

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12yr ago

@ajaypalnitj yes, my question was in relation to controlling your costs for the carebuddies you dispatch. How do you keep track of their time inputs for each of your clients, so that you are not overpaying for these services?

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12yr ago

Maker

@umarkcanada Hi, we give an estimate of time to the client and we charge them after the service is delivered. We call the client after the service and check with them about quality of service and also if the CareBuddy tried to just drag the time to bill more hours. It is in our best (financial and ethical) interest that CareBuddy serves more people and spends only as much time as needed. Right now all the tracking is via phone, and soon we will be launching the app which will track the CareBuddy and will log all the tasks done by him/her. Hope it answers your question, if not please ask again.

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12yr ago

@ajaypalnitj Yes, I understand that it is in the company's best interest to minimize the time spent for each client so as to be available for other clients, but this may sometimes be contrary to the interests of the individual CareBuddy, who may want to maximize time spent with one client due to travel time or other factors (laziness?). So you do need to have effective control systems in place to effectively monitor the situation to ensure QOS.

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12yr ago

How do you vet the assistants? Do you train them to manage patients, especially the elderly?

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12yr ago

Maker

@gaurav_gupta9 Hi Gaurav, we do all the background checks. As of now, we are only hiring carebuddies through our own referral network. Carebuddies have hospitality or caregiving background. Besides we train them in empathy and we also prefer to hire people who have been through similar situation themselves and can really relate to the cause. Since people with these backgrounds already have initial training needed for the work, so it makes getting them on board easy. Going further, we are documenting all the processes and we have allocated part of our revenue/funds for training alone.

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12yr ago