The company declined to comment on its projected revenue from the new product.
There are an estimated 4.1 million caregivers in New York state, according to the state Department of Health. Fifty percent of caregivers nationwide said caregiving increased their level of emotional stress, while more than one-third said it affected their physical feelings of stress, according to research from AARP.
This isn’t Uber’s first attempt to crack the healthcare market. In 2018, Uber Health launched to allow health plans and providers to use the platform to coordinate non-emergency transportation. The move was an attempt to offset no-shows at appointments; more than 20% of patients missed necessary care due to transportation access issues, according to a study conducted by Princeton-based nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Today, there are more than 3,000 health plans and providers that use Uber Health to arrange patient transportation, according to Donovan.
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Last fall, the firm also partnered with Chapter, a Greenwich Village-based Medicare navigation startup to help Medicare Advantage enrollees maximize their benefits.
The moves are part of a growing trend in which insurance companies increasingly reimburse not just medical providers, but other services that can positively influence social determinants of health — non-medical factors such as economic stability, education and access to transit – that often have an outsize impact on health outcomes.
New York state has $7.5 billion allocated towards its Medicaid 1115 waiver, a federally-approved amendment to the public health program that changes how it pays for health-related social needs, such as transportation, nutrition and even rent.
This story first appeared in Crain's New York Business.
