A Chicago-based healthcare startup that aims to optimize end-of-life caregiving is gearing up to reach more patients.
Uphold Health, an end-of-life healthcare coordination platform formerly known as After Care, is expanding to Boston and Houston now that it has completed its pilot program at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
The startup is currently talking with investors to raise additional funding following its friends and family round and is hiring care navigators, said the company’s founder and CEO Margaret “Maggie” Norris.
Uphold Health rolled out its Advance Care Navigation platform on May 1. The startup is hiring for two care navigator positions, ideally licensed clinical social workers or nurse practitioners, Norris said.
The company is tentatively aiming to expand to Boston and Houston in late 2019, because healthcare is a major part of each city’s economy and the company has team members in both cities, Norris said.
Citing the company’s efforts to raise funds and improve the platform, the company declined to state on the record how many families use the service.
Using the platform, caregivers can store their personal information, talk with care navigators via video calls regarding what to expect when overseeing someone’s end-of-life care, find the necessary products and services for the patient, and store pertinent documents and information on the platform where physicians, lawyers, financial advisors and other necessary parties can access them, Norris said.
In January 2018, Norris, who attended Northwestern University, began testing out the Uphold Health platform 17 physicians, including primary care physicians, oncologists and radiologists. The company also tested the platform with 35 caregivers and patients.
The feedback from the testing helped the company to improve its prototype and uncovered a pattern of poor communication between healthcare providers overseeing the care of one patient, Norris said.
“Everyone seemed to think that it was someone else’s responsibility to have these conversations,” Norris said. “It was kind of like a game of tag-and-stack, where they’re all kind of pitching it to somebody else. That was really great for us to understand.”
Norris, who launched the company in 2017, said she did so after losing two family members to cancer. Her father was diagnosed with lung cancer that later metastasized to his spine, and her step father had bladder cancer that spread to his brain, she said.
As her father’s cancer spread to his spine, he eventually lost use of his legs, a possibility that Norris said she wasn’t aware of at first. When he first lost use of his legs, the family called 911 and her father was taken to the hospital, where he underwent multiple tests which ultimately uncovered his spinal cancer, she said.
While her father’s end-of-life care was complicated by unnecessary treatments, her step father, meanwhile, was able to live out his last days supported by loved ones in his home, she said.
“Seeing the two of [them] side by side, back to back, you say, ‘Here’s what it could be. And here’s ultimately a situation that it could be,’” Norris said. “You realize there is a better way.”
With Uphold Health, Norris said wants to give healthcare decisions back to the patient, because too often decisions surrounding treatment are left up to the physicians and insurance companies.
“In our research, what we’ve found is that the majority [of patients] would prefer quality of life,” Norris said. “The majority would prefer pain management, home-based care, and a much more peaceful ending versus multiple treatments and surgeries, and exacerbating conditions and environments.”
