Carrot is expanding its parenting benefits with on-demand virtual pediatric care through Blueberry Pediatrics.
Carrot, a fertility and family-building benefits platform working with payers and employers, will offer Blueberry as an add-on. The new offering will be available to families with kids under 12. It is expected to roll out in the next few months. The offering will be covered by the plan sponsor, and members are not expected to incur out-of-pocket costs.
Parents will have 24/7 access to on-demand virtual visits with board-certified pediatricians from Blueberry for common issues like ear infections, rashes, colds and the flu. Families can connect with pediatricians around the clock via secure messaging, video or audio. Members will also get a home medical kit with a wireless digital ear scope, pediatric pulse oximeter and thermometer. This will help Blueberry clinicians remotely assess children.
The offering was born from customer demand, Carrot executives said, in order to support not only new parents but also parents with kids of older age.
“There’s a general desire on the part of our customers to be supportive of families, to be very pro-family,” Tammy Sun, founder and CEO of Carrot, told Fierce Healthcare. “Being pro-family is about expanding and deepening access to family-forming benefits … but it doesn't stop once the mom has delivered the baby.”
Part of the goal with the partnership is to reduce preventable and costly emergency department visits. Pediatric ED visits occur at a rate of nearly one per infant, per year, and average more than $1,100 per visit for medical reasons. Telehealth can reduce unnecessary ED visits by up to 40%, according to Blueberry data.
"If they can get immediate care for cold and flu, it’s a win-win for everybody,” Sun said.
Another benefit is worker productivity, she added. Telehealth helps minimize the time away from work that parents have to spend taking their kids to appointments.
“Blueberry was built to give families access to high-quality pediatric care anytime they need it,” Rich Berner, CEO of Blueberry, said in an announcement. “We’re proud to partner with Carrot to help parents navigate the parenting journey with confidence and peace of mind, while helping employers build a more resilient, satisfied and supported workforce.”
Carrot evaluated several vendors, but Blueberry proved to have the most flexible and customizable offering. To support its clients, Carrot regularly reports on a number of measures, including member satisfaction and experience, trends in claims activity and costs. Those considerations applied to the Blueberry offering as well.
“Building for the enterprise has a bunch of complexity and a bunch of requirements,” she said. These include reporting capabilities, ROI tracking and the strength of the member-facing experience.
Blueberry is intuitive and easy to use, per Sun, with a clinician available around the clock. “You really need that kind of always-on access,” she said.
Carrot’s existing programs support men and women across a broad spectrum of care, from family planning and in vitro fertilization to pregnancy and postpartum to menopause care. Carrot has more than 1,200 customers that range from small to midsized and Fortune 10 employers, as well as payers like Cigna.
Blueberry, founded in 2017, combines on-demand virtual visits with proprietary home diagnostic kits to remove barriers to timely medical care. While initially launched as a flat-fee membership model, it has since expanded with payer partnerships, including CareSource Nevada—a nonprofit Medicaid plan—and Aetna Better Health of Illinois.