A new tech company is striving to make it easier for New Yorkers to find care and resources for their aging parents, regardless of their economic status.
Hera — founded by Jenny Lee, Connie Kang and Myles Novick — is using artificial intelligence, experienced social workers, and new Medicare rules to provide affordable geriatric care management to families who might not normally be able to afford the help.
New York City’s senior population is growing steadily as baby boomers age, and many are staying at home, relying on loved ones for care and support. But their adult children often struggle to find and pay for resources like in-home aides, medications and transit, and navigating government benefits and other benefits can become a full-time job.
Lee, a software engineer who previously worked at Google and Uber, recognized those struggles for the first time a few years ago, when her grandmother died after a long battle with dementia. Lee’s aunt, who she described as an “alpha daughter,” had been her grandmother’s primary caretaker for years.
“I just, from the sidelines, thought she was a complete superhero. She was an architect, she was raising children, she was taking care of my grandmother,” Lee said. “But it was at the memorial service that I realized she actually just fully broke during that whole journey.”
At the time, Lee was working at mental health-focused tech company Headway. After years of working at more traditional tech firms like Google and Uber, the job made her realize she wanted to keep using technology to help people.
So, Hera was born. In development, the team interviewed more than 100 adult children who were caring for their aging parents, Lee said.
“They all said the same thing. They were like, ‘I’m lost, spending hours on the phone, hours online, running into dead end after dead end, I don’t know where to turn to, what my options are,’” she said.
Two families they interviewed hadn’t struggled so much, Lee said, and they had something in common. Both had hired a geriatric care manager to take on the responsibility of enrolling their parents in government benefits, finding support services like in-home aides and transportation, and advocating for care from insurance and healthcare providers.
Geriatric care managers — who are usually social workers — are experts in navigating complex systems, securing resources, and creating long-term care plans.
But their services can cost as much as $250 per hour.
“As I looked at the landscape, I realized those that have money are able to put money toward the problem. Then you have the lower-income class who qualify for Medicaid, which is at least a shredded safety net,” Lee said. “But then you have what I call the forgotten middle class. And they end up depleting all their assets until they’re on Medicaid, and that’s the population I really wanted to build for, and definitely where my family falls.”
Two things shifted to allow Hera to support those middle-class families, Lee explained. Medicare came out with new codes that meant care management would be covered by insurance, and artificial intelligence began to advance.
“My two cofounders and I all come from technology backgrounds, and we were like, ‘Hey, let’s leverage AI to actually build for a population that’s traditionally left behind,” she said. “We wanted to build a company where we can help humans do what humans do best, which is foster human connection.”
As of Hera’s soft launch in early December, the company had a team of 15 care managers — called “Heroes” — most of whom are experienced geriatric social workers.
After a consultation, clinical assessment and direct meetings with family members and the parent themselves, the Heroes help create a care plan and begin to carry it out, keeping in regular contact with the family.
The Heroes mostly offer help in four areas, Lee said: coordinated referrals, medications, benefits navigation, and Medicaid.
Coordinated referrals can include a range of services, from home care and visiting doctors to safety equipment and transportation to and from appointments. Hera works with a series of trusted partners to set services up quickly and easily.
For medications, Hera’s Heroes work directly with a client’s primary care physician and the pharmacy to create pre-sorted blister packs of all their medications, which are shipped directly to their homes.
Benefits navigation is wide-ranging, and includes both insurance and community resources, Lee said. One client, a former swimmer, was struggling physically and mentally without access to his favorite pastime.
“We ended up getting him aquatic therapy covered by Medicare, and it was a game-changer in terms of his personal happiness,” Lee said. “But, you know, he didn’t even realize it was a covered benefit and that’s something we can get you set up with.”
Many of Hera’s middle-class clients are not enrolled in Medicaid to start with, Lee said. They’re often required to spend down their assets before they become eligible, and Hera can help them with the approvals process. Once someone is enrolled, “it takes a little bit of advocacy to get them the care that they need,” Lee said.
“For many, many solo older adults that have been cycling in and out of the hospital constantly, we’ve been able to fight and get 24/7 care and making sure that we keep them safely at home, because now they have that person who can help make sure they don’t fall, or help make sure that they’re taking their meds, and help them to do all those activities of daily living around the house,” Lee said.
Hera’s services are usually covered entirely by Medicare, Lee said. Most clients pay nothing out-of-pocket, and those who pay $15 per hour.
“We bill Medicare directly,” Lee said. “There’s a lot of pain that goes into working with insurance, but that’s one of the key ways to make it affordable. And then it’s leveraging technology to make sure we’re spending our humans’ time in the right way.”
That’s where Hera’s AI comes into play. The company developed an operating system, Hera OS, where the Heroes manage all of their care plans, tasks, and more.
The system helps with task management, to allow care managers to make the most of their time helping families. It might suggest that a voice agent sit on hold with Medicaid for several hours, freeing the care manager up for other tasks, or suggest alternatives for a long daily to-do list.
Billing and documentation is entirely automated, Lee said, so care managers don’t have to spend hours on administrative tasks.
It is also a resource database that will keep growing over time. When one Hero discovers a new service — like an affordable hoarding resource — they’ll plug it into the system, which can then suggest it to other managers dealing with similar issues.
“Our platform itself is actually quite intelligent and can suggest the right things for families and can learn from, over time, the thousands of Heroes that will be placing calls in different local communities and understanding the different nuances about insurance,” Lee said.
Novick, Hera’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, regularly meets with the Heroes to discuss the issues they’re facing and build new elements of the OS to meet their needs.
Hera plans to keep expanding across New York City and eventually nationwide, Lee said, using its operating system to support more and more Heroes. She wants Hera to become both a trusted resource and a way for adult children to take back valuable time with their parents, rather than spending hours on the phone or online struggling to find care.
“Everyone is talking about AI, and there’s so much hype around it,” she said. “What’s been interesting to me is we’re kind of waiting for a crisis. It’s already starting to unfold, it’s starting to happen with this aging population. I think oftentimes, because it’s something that’s hard to talk about, it is something we kind of try to push aside. That was really our focus. This is a massive population, it’s going to touch all of our lives at some point, and how to we build something for that upfront versus being hit with it down the road.”
