TCARE, a Madison-based healthcare startup, has had a busy year.
The startup raised $900,000 in seed funding in May, and participated in both gener8tor’s 12-week accelerator program and MassChallenge’s HealthTech accelerator in Boston.
When I interviewed TCARE co-founder and CEO Ali Ahmadi for this story, he was boarding a plane back to Madison from Connecticut, where TCARE had been competing with 22 other startups for a spot in the Hartford InsurTech Hub accelerator.
To put it simply, TCARE has been on a roll this year, which is why it was named one of Wisconsin Inno’s 50 on Fire.
TCARE makes software for health insurance providers that allows them to help caregivers take care of their sick and elderly family members at home for longer, as opposed to placing them in assisted living facilities. The startup was first developed in 2007 at UW-Milwaukee with a grant from the National Institutes of Health and fully commercialized in 2016.
Through TCARE’s platform, social workers employed by insurance providers can give caregivers the support they need to prevent burnout. Social workers regularly communicate with caregivers on the platform, asking them a series of questions based on data and algorithms that create individualized care plans for the issues they may be at risk for. When caregivers need help, social workers provide talk therapy, support groups and in extreme cases, interventions.
“We are all about the care of the caregiver and their behavioral, mental and emotional needs,” Ahmadi said. “Imagine us as a system that standardizes therapy sessions for the caregivers.”
TCARE currently has more than 60 clients, which include private insurance companies like Anthem and Blue Cross Blue Shield. However, the startup also works with Medicare and Medicaid. Since launching, TCARE has helped serve more than 100,000 caregivers.
The startup operates in 22 states nationwide, including Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois. Ironically, Wisconsin is actually one of the states TCARE isn’t available in, partly because of the state’s political climate.
“We’ve not had much love at home,” Ahmadi said. “The Medicaid expansion has not been as forward-thinking as other states, and we’ve not seen Wisconsin be early adopters of technology.”
But the data shows that Wisconsin could be missing out. TCARE is particularly useful for insurance providers because it helps keeps patients at home longer, instead of being placed in nursing homes, a costly expense that insurance providers typically end up paying for.
In a 2014 pilot program in Washington state, TCARE was shown to save the state’s Medicaid budget $20 million, Ahmadi said.
“The longer you are capable of taking care of mom and dad, the longer [insurance providers] financially benefit,” Ahmadi said.
TCARE, which employs 18 people, has raised more than $1.2 million in venture capital funding. The most recent funding round is being used to help TCARE expand to more states, Ahmadi said.
