For many seniors living in rural communities, not having reliable transportation means going without regular medical checkups. To solve this, a Bay Area health care startup is partnering with RiteAid (NYSE:RAD) to deliver the care seniors need more easily.
"Retailer footprint in rural America is big. It's bigger than healthcare's footprint," Homeward founder and CEO Jenny Schneider told me, and that offers a unique opportunity to bring health services to where people already are, particularly when they're out shopping. "We're excited to be doing it first with Rite Aid."
Homeward is building a network of mobile care units that will send health care practitioners directly to people's homes in rural communities to provide critical primary care services with a particular focus on serving Medicare patients.
"Rite Aid is deeply committed to improving the lives of our customers with expanded pharmacy and health care services in underserved rural communities," Rite Aid president and CEO Heyward Donigan said in a statement. "We are proud to support the innovative work that Homeward is doing to introduce a new, hybrid care model that will play a critical role in our customers' health journeys."
Beginning in July, Homeward will start sending its mobile care teams to Rite Aid locations in Michigan where they will be able to enroll new members and provide on-site primary care services in addition to in-home visits.
It's the first of potentially many similar partnerships for Homeward which is aiming to expand into other states as it grows. Rite Aid has more than 700 pharmacies in rural locations nationally, as well.
"Health care is broken in rural America. I'm from rural America and there's an opportunity to make it better," Schneider said.
More than 52 million people in the U.S., or 16% of the population, was 65 years or older in 2020, according to the Census, more than half of whom are female. And that number is expected to at least double to 80.8 million people by 2040.
And as of 2016, nearly 19% of the country lived in rural areas, including 23% of people 65 years and older, predominantly in the South and Midwest.
Schneider co-founded Homeward in 2021 with Amar Kendale. In March, Homeward announced a $20 million investment from General Catalyst, and the company currently has 20 employees.
