MedArrive, a care management platform merging telehealth and in-person care, is partnering with Ouma Health, a maternity telehealth platform, to expand its mother and fetal in-home care offerings to women on Medicaid.

Ouma offers maternal health care services, including prenatal and postpartum visits, perinatal risk stratification and mitigation counseling, behavioral health screenings and counseling, remote patient monitoring, chronic care management and lactation support. 

MedArrive's provider network of paramedics, EMTs and other healthcare providers visit patients on behalf of their health insurance plan, providing in-home healthcare services, health assessments, diagnostics and preventative health measures. They also assist with transportation, nutrition and mobility. 

Through the partnership, MedArrive will add Ouma Health's maternal healthcare services to its offerings for managed Medicaid health plan members. 

"The MedArrive field provider team is already providing important care services in the homes of vulnerable people, and it's because of that bridge into the home that we can layer in Ouma's virtual MFM [maternal fetal medicine care]," Dan Trigub, CEO and cofounder of MedArrive, told MobiHealthNews in an email.

"A combination of both the MedArrive Care Team and Ouma providers can now provide mom and baby holistic care from prenatal up to one year postpartum. After working with our health plan or provider partners to identify at-risk women, our field providers will visit their homes during our regular visits, addressing many preventive and social care needs, but then also can arrange for them to see an Ouma specialist which can provide all the care needed to families before, during and after pregnancy."

THE LARGER TREND

Maternal mortality rates rose significantly in 2021 compared to previous years, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The report found that 1,205 people in the U.S. died of maternal causes in 2021, a substantial increase from the 861 reported deaths in 2020. Rates of maternal mortality among Black women were 2.6 times higher than those for white and Hispanic women. 

Other companies aiming to improve maternal healthcare with digital health include virtual obstetric care platform Babyscripts, maternal health startups Mahmee and Cayaba Care, and tech-enabled maternity clinic Millie.

Erica Dhawan will offer more detail at her HIMSS23 presentation " Executive Summit Keynote: Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence." It is scheduled for Monday, April 17, at 8:45 a.m. - 9:20 a.m. CT at the Marriott Marquis Chicago, Level 4, in the Grand Horizon Ballroom.