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Global fertility, family-building and hormonal health platform Carrot is partnering with Blueberry Pediatrics to add on-demand pediatric telemedicine to its employer benefits offerings.
Iowa-based Carrot works with employers, health plans and health systems, offering a platform focused on extending access to care from pre-pregnancy through menopause and parenting.
Carrot's services include gestational surrogacy, adoption, pregnancy and postpartum care, parenting and return to work, menopause/low testosterone, IVF and IUI, and egg, sperm and embryo freezing.
"Fertility is about building families, pursuing parenthood, and certainly, the early months and years of postpartum have long been part of our product. But over time, we've seen a lot more interest from our customers in helping parents of children, both young children but also those that are a little bit older, in their journey as well," Tammy Sun, founder and CEO of Carrot, told MobiHealthNews.
"So we've doubled down on this effort to provide our customers and members with a deeper and more integrated pediatric experience to help new parents, whether it's for immediate access to a doctor in the middle of the night, or last-minute access to backup child care that can be supported by Carrot's payment platform in terms of our plan design."
Blueberry Pediatrics is a telehealth platform that allows individuals to connect with a board-certified pediatrician in minutes, 24/7. The company offers care to patients up to 21 years of age and younger. It also sends members a home medical kit to help evaluate their symptoms.
"We ship a health kit that has an otoscope, a pulse oximeter, a thermometer, and things like that, which not only doubles the number of conditions we can handle online, such as ear aches, nose and throats, rashes and eyes, but also helps with consumer satisfaction as the parents feel like they're a bigger part of the care," Rich Berner, CEO of Blueberry Pediatrics, told MobiHealthNews.
Through the partnership, Carrot will integrate Blueberry's 24/7 telehealth offerings to allow employees with children under 12 access to pediatric care through their employers' benefits program.
Carrot members will also receive a home medical kit with a wireless digital ear scope, a pediatric pulse oximeter and a thermometer.
"We worked pretty closely with Blueberry to develop a unique integration and a customized solution for our members that would allow us to combine the best of our features and capabilities with their unique value proposition, so that members and customers got something pretty differentiated and pretty unique," Sun said.
Berner reiterated the benefits of the partnership for both Carrot members and Blueberry's corporate model.
"From a business perspective, we're hoping that it's a great symbiotic partnership, that it keeps the relationship longer for the care families and that they now have a service through care that they can keep that relationship until the family ages out of it," Berner said.
"And for us, beyond being able to impact a bigger portion of the country, we're looking at it as a partnership that helps us accelerate growth."
Blueberry Pediatrics already partners with health plans. Its partnership with Carrot will help the company move into the employer market.
"We're just getting into the benefits market. We've had a number of employers who've heard about what we're doing and are reaching out to us. So, now, with this partnership, we're starting to get involved with employers as well," Berner said.
"For employers, they see it as a phenomenal benefit to attract and retain employees."
Sun said that in her experience, employers want to give their workforce as much flexibility as possible in terms of their ability to care for their family.
"Every time you're able to alleviate a parent's concern or a need to take care of their child by helping them access a doctor via telemedicine, to care for that ear infection or to care for that flu or that cold without having to take the kid to either a doctor's appointment or, God forbid, the ER, that is a huge win for both the parent, the child, but also the employer," Sun said.
Blueberry's pediatric telehealth platform will be available to Carrot's members in the spring of this year.
