Millie, a California-based hybrid women’s health clinic, is expanding its offerings with perimenopause and menopause care.
The offering, available in person and virtually, includes hormone therapy, nonhormonal treatments, vaginal treatments and lifestyle strategies. Millie currently has two clinics in the Bay Area.
The company, which launched in 2022, was originally focused on maternity care. Staffed with nurse-midwives and doulas, Millie provides care for low-risk pregnancies out of its clinic. Millie also partners with hospitals, where its providers support labor and deliver babies. Midwives drive lower caesarean section rates and higher patient satisfaction scores and can help fill crucial gaps in obstetrics care. As of 2024, more than a third of U.S. counties were designated maternity care deserts.
In 2023, Millie introduced preconception counseling and gynecology offerings, recognizing that optimizing these areas of health can support better maternal and overall health outcomes. It has now further expanded its continuum of care with menopause care, since many of its patients are becoming parents in their late 30s and navigating postpartum and perimenopause at the same time.
“What we discovered in our patient population over the course of the last three years is people wanted to start care with us sooner, they wanted to stay with us longer,” Anu Sharma, founder and CEO of Millie, told Fierce Healthcare. “It’s often the single greatest healthcare experience that people are going to go through in their 30s. Wherever they establish care, for maternity, is often where they want to kind of continue to stay.”
Sharma had her own daughter at 39, after which she had to navigate a range of symptoms associated with perimenopause that were conflated with postpartum. “That transition was completely lost on my care providers at the time,” she recalled. “There is a population that is sort of postpartum and not quite in menopause that is kind of falling through the cracks as they navigate that transition.”
To prepare to offer perimenopause and menopause care, Millie providers went through three months of training over the summer. Clinical leaders put together the training based on evidence-based guidelines and academic research. “We review our guidelines at least quarterly, if not more frequently, to make sure that they are consistent with the standard and any new research that is coming out,” Sharma noted.
Millie is in-network with all major payers, including commercial and Medicaid. While historically, it has not accepted cash pay, given the complexity of its work with hospitals, it is currently reconsidering accepting cash pay. Today, Millie has on-staff OB-GYNs, nurse-midwives, women’s health nurse practitioners, doulas, lactation consultants and mental health specialists.
More than half of Millie patients are people of color. Millie’s care model has shown better outcomes with 30% better C-section rates among new moms with low-risk pregnancies. It also demonstrates 67% better preterm birth rates compared to national averages, Millie claims. Its NPS score is above 90.
Earlier this spring, Millie raised $12 million in a series A round co-led by TMV and Foreground Capital. Pivotal Ventures and the March of Dimes Innovation Fund also participated, alongside others. The capital will be used to expand Millie’s tech platform and footprint, with new clinics opening throughout 2025 and 2026. Millie hopes to expand beyond California next year, according to Sharma.