Caregivers Can Now Catch a Ride or Get a Delivery (13:43)
Ride Sharing Apps Like UBER add Services to Assist Caregivers
Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses the use of ride sharing apps to help caregivers take care of family members with UBER Health’s Zachary Clark.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Good morning, welcome back to the Broadcast Retirement Network. This is BRN AM for Monday, June 10th, 2024. And our top story today, family caregivers can now get a ride or get a delivery.
And joining me now to discuss this and a lot more, Zachary Clark is with Uber Health. Zach, it’s so great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us in the program this morning.
It’s a pleasure to be here, Jeff. Yeah, and we really appreciate you coming on. We’re gonna talk about Uber Health in a few minutes.
Let’s talk about just some basic stats. One in five Americans is a caregiver, that’s 20%. That number, Zach, is only gonna go up.
Zachary Clark, UBER Health
Yeah, there’s no question. I think when we think about that burden, it’s only gonna increase based on the demography in this country, as well as kind of the roles that caregivers continue to have to undertake. I think oftentimes that number could be even underreported when you think about the physical, emotional, mental strain, as well as the kind of requirements it takes to take care of a loved one.
And I think anybody within the sandwich generation and others feels that every day, certainly. So yeah, one in five, but I think it’s probably really more than that when you really think about what’s actually happening outside the four walls of the clinic today.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, and let’s talk about some of the challenges of being a caregiver. There’s your time, there’s financial constraints, potentially, maybe not, you know, maybe the anxiety of having to do that. That creates a lot of, a bit of a burden, or a large burden for many of these caregivers.
Zachary Clark, UBER Health
Yeah, that’s right. The reports that we see indicate that about $7,000 of out-of-pocket expense on a per-caregiver basis, and nearly 40% of the caregivers respond that they never feel truly relaxed or comfortable, given the kind of stresses they feel, both within the four walls of their home and whatever they’re doing to support their loved ones outside of that, outside of their community or outside where they are. So I think there’s no question that that stress continues to kind of drive a wedge between kind of someone’s aggregate quality of life and the financial strain is very real.
Again, $7,000 of out-of-pocket expense that’s going towards a loved one and not towards someone’s individual kind of needs or their family’s needs is a pretty significant amount of money.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, and it can just weigh you down, you know, for your own personal financial needs. I mean, thinking about retirement, I’m thinking about all the things that you’re doing take you away from work. Zach, let’s talk about Uber Health.
And I think obviously people know the name Uber. What is Uber Health? How does it work?
Zachary Clark, UBER Health
Yeah, so Uber Health was founded around seven years ago, really predicated on the idea that providers in the community needed ways to get their patients to their clinics. And so we started off doing work, both not-for-profit work, a lot of actually bringing vaccines and other kinds of services into the community, but really focused first in health systems, hospitals, and the provider settings, specifically thinking about dialysis and substance abuse and other care settings where there were challenges to the frequency of a visit and also kind of a repetitive kind of motion as you think about the kind of care that needs to be delivered in that outpatient setting.
So flash forward seven years from now, today we’re kind of an integrated platform across the healthcare ecosystem. We’re integrated across the payer landscape as well as providers. And we’re really focused on developing an infrastructure that allows ancillary benefits to be accessed in ways that we believe is really meaningful both to the patient and to the broader ecosystem.
So that takes the form of transportation today. It also takes the form of over-the-counter medications and even grocery delivery. And so think of us as a platform that you’re able to, in a delegated way and on behalf of somebody else, get somebody where they need to be or get the things they need specifically related to kind of the improvement of their health.
And we focus there on OTC and grocery benefits.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And let’s talk, last question before we go to a commercial because I obviously have to pay the bills or not obvious, but I have to pay the bills. Let’s talk about how you can actually add caregivers to your account. And that’s, so a user, presumably a patient or someone who needs care or needs something, they can add a caregiver to their account, their profile.
Zachary Clark, UBER Health
That’s exactly right. We were so thrilled to announce our caregiver solution here just a few weeks ago. And caregiving is a different discipline for us in the sense it’s our first kind of entry into being able to solve directly for the member or for the patient directly through their consumer application.
So what we talked about previously, Uber Health as a platform was really focused on those that are delivering care within the four walls of a clinic or inside of a payer. Caregiver allows the care receiver to invite that loved one into their experience directly on their Uber application. And we believe that’s transformative largely because so much of that care can be delivered outside the four walls.
And it’s really an empowerment function for the way that that care receiver can then kind of share that burden with that caregiver and vice versa. So in a very material way, if I live in Birmingham, Alabama and my caregiver is in Houston, Texas, that loved one is in Houston, Texas, that individual can now order a ride on behalf of me and tap into my benefits over time and do it in a way that both that loved one and that caregiver has access to that information in real time, just like the magic of Uber today. And then I think additionally, it allows for that same kind of integration and communication that we’ve grown accustomed to.
So three-way communication with the driver, immediate updates when that loved one or mom has gotten to where they need to be, or in the same way that we think about deliveries as that individual, that courier in our marketplace goes out and supports that individual with their order, we’re getting that in real time, both the care receiver and the caregiver themselves. So we think it’s really transformative to reduce that administrative and painful friction. And it allows a caregiver to care for somebody when they’re not proximal to that patient, which many of us are given kind of the spread of our families and kind of the way that we think about where we live today, which is not necessarily, as I think many of us know, within the same communities we grew up in or where our loved ones are.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
A lot of states, municipalities, and even the federal government thinking about the aging infrastructure, this getting medicines and getting caregiver things to loved ones, very important. What’s been the feedback? Have you gotten feedback?
And of course, everyone knows, like I said, the name Uber, but what has been the feedback to Uber Health and in particular, these caregiving services?
Zachary Clark, UBER Health
I think we’ve been overwhelmed by the positivity we’ve heard both from individual caregivers, patients, and really the marketplace writ large. I think the first thing people think of is there is a sentiment of appreciation that Uber, the big Uber is trying to solve this problem. And then I think it comes down into the recognition that Uber Health has been trying to solve these problems in various capacities over many years.
So people are making that linkage between what Uber does in their daily lives and now what Uber Health has been really focused on over time. So I think that’s been really exciting. I think what we hear most commonly is that this is one of the most kind of visceral things that a patient and their caregiver can do together that really relieves some of the logistical pain that comes from caring for an individual, right?
And so whether you’re an executive sitting behind a desktop with a mom that has a challenge and something that she needs in that moment, whether you’re in any kind of scenario where you’re just not close enough to that loved one to be able to solve a problem for them, we consistently hear for caregivers in particular that transportation as a focus is something that really drives both stress and anxiety and also emotional pain because I can’t always be where I want to be in order to support that loved one in that moment, right?
And so as the burden of care continues to increase, the number and frequency of times that mom needs or dad needs to get to the doctor continues to grow, right? And so the ability to solve that problem for mom and dad and do it in a really technologically efficient and elegant way in our minds, I think is what people get really excited about. And I think when I think about the business environment generally, the payer environment in particular, I think there’s been a recognition for a long time that caregivers have been under-recognized as advocates for their members as a health plan would think about it.
And so health plans are really excited about this because it allows them to develop a relationship to that caregiver and it allows them to leverage benefits like ancillary benefits, non-emergent medical transportation, OTC and grocery, et cetera, in a way that really kind of takes hold within a member’s life. And so if you think about what’s happening broadly in the marketplace, ancillary benefits have never been funded at the level they’ve been funded at, but the underlying level of utilization is actually lower than I think what both CMS and what society would like to see. And when I say ancillary benefits, I mean vision, dental, over-the-counter medications, grocery benefits, et cetera.
And so the hope is that this will be a kind of linkage into accessing that benefit. And then a caregiver not only can use that individual’s health plan benefit, but their own dollars and use them in a way that kind of most efficiently gets what that individual needs or where that individual needs to go in one experience. And so we’re really enthused by the way that the payer landscape has responded there.
And we think if we can play a critical role in driving increased access, that’s the right kind of positioning that we need to see so that Medicare, CMS, HHS, et cetera, continues to invest in ancillary benefits in the way that they have in the last several years.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I like that you used the word driving, pun completely intended there. Zach, last question. How do you build upon this?
So how do you partner with the agencies? How do you partner with the insurers to build atop this? So, because you talked about grocery, you talked about pharmacy delivery, you talked about getting people back and forth potentially to the doctor.
So what comes next in the mind of Uber Health?
Zachary Clark, UBER Health
I think there’s a couple of ways to think about that. The first that we’re really excited about is that this is a platform to be able to bring caregivers into an experience that can really help bring a large scale network into what people traditionally think is Uber, right? So we’re looking to not-for-profits, community-based organizations, large organizations that are already facilitating caregiving today and thinking really critically about how do we solve this kind of traditional marketplace conundrum that Uber’s done really well in many disciplines, but bring them into a world where they can actually kind of leverage their skills and talents across that space.
That would be one thing. I think the second way to think about this is that the more frequency and utilization that we see across kind of these traditional underlying ancillary benefits, using flex cards as an example, being able to continue to get positive guidance both from the payer market, as well as really those agencies around the ability to access that benefit is really key. And so what we know very much is that when somebody gets the over-the-counter medications they need, and when somebody gets to where they need to go, their quality of life is higher and their total cost of care will be lower over time.
And so we want to ensure that caregivers are not only represented in that benefit structure over time, but that there is broad agreement that this kinds of technology will help kind of drive the kinds of outcomes that we know both the data vets out and that members and caregivers are asking for. So I think those are two things you’ll see from us. And then finally, I think this kind of, if we can play any role at all, it’s continuing to drive the message that you and I started off with at the beginning is this under-recognition of really how much burden caregivers will continue, I think, to be under as we age, as a demography and as a society.
And so if Uber can play a stronger role in supporting those populations, I think you’re gonna see more and more from us in that space. So that’s what we’re really excited.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I mean, and it couldn’t come at a better time because as we started off talking about, it’s probably more than 20% of Americans are caregivers. And by the way, you become a caregiver at different points in time. Zach, we’re gonna have to leave it there.
Great to see it. Great work by Uber Health. And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.
It’s a pleasure. Can’t wait to come back again. That wraps up this episode of BRNAM.
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