Grief Care Platform Betterleave Expanding Via New Hospice-Partnership Model

The grief care tech platform Betterleave is expanding with a new hospice-partnership model that augments its employee-benefit business.

The company’s platform is designed as a benefit that companies can offer their employees who have lost a loved one, a pregnancy, or a pet, including access to care coordinators, death care experts, products, and counseling services.

But in recent months, Betterleave has been collaborating with hospices to offer their services to families receiving bereavement care, as well as their workforce.

“We have been supporting several employer-based organizations, including hospice groups,” Co-Founder and CEO Cara McCarty told Hospice News. “And what’s been really incredible is by supporting nurses as an additional layer of care through just the weight that they’re going through, we’ve been able to also extend our services to their members.”

The Austin, Texas-based startup launched in late March with backing from the investment firms HR Leaders, Strive Ventures, Math Venture Partners, and The Fund.

To date, Betterleave has established close to a dozen partnerships with hospice providers, but has several more pilots in the pipeline, according to McCarty. These include a range of small community-based organizations and large multi-state providers.

The company has also seen growing interest among pediatric hospice programs, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Albert Swantner told Hospice News.

Individual partnerships have developed in a number of ways. Some hospices have reached out to Betterleave to discuss opportunities to work together, and the tech platform has done its own marketing to prospective client organizations.

Some of the collaborating hospices have made Betterleave available to patients and families prior to patients’ deaths and the traditionally defined bereavement period. The company also provides patients and families with guidance on how to logistically prepare, including estate and memorial planning, as well as counseling for anticipatory grief.

“There’s so much grief that happens before the event. After someone gets that diagnosis, that’s maybe even a harder time, because you’re really coming to terms with the end of that person’s life,” Swantner told Hospice News. “We really want to kind of help you get prepared for that moment.”

In addition to their work with hospices, Betterleave has seen growth among its employer-clients in other industries, such as the finance, life insurance, and retirement services sectors, McCarty indicated.

The company’s next steps in growing its base of hospice partners initially will prioritize growth in their home state of Texas, though the platform is available nationwide. This is expected to become a springboard for further expansion.

‘We’re definitely going to continue to focus on a national presence, to continue to grow and to continue to scale and to be able to support folks across the U.S. and maybe even into Canada next year,” McCarty said. “Even our employers [clients] have remote workforces all around the country, and so we need to be able to be accessible as a platform 24/7, anywhere they are.”