Rural America is facing a healthcare crisis. Home to 60 million people, rural areas face a 23% higher mortality rate compared to urban locations due to lack of infrastructure, lower socio-economic status and provider shortages. Indeed, rural areas have half as many primary care providers and an eighth as many specialists as urban locales.

In this episode, Homeward’s CEO Dr. Jennifer Schneider discusses how her company is re-architecting care delivery in rural America with the goals of improving access and health outcomes.

We discuss:

• How Homeward uses technology and non-physician providers to expand access to care in rural areas.

• Lessons from Homeward’s early rollout in Minnesota.

• Why Jennifer and her co-founder decided to make Homeward a public benefit corporation.

Jennifer says we often underestimate how large the rural healthcare market is:

“[When I founded Homeward after leaving Livongo] people said … ‘So great that you did this nice little niche company for your next company’. How many people do you think live in a rural health care markets? … The answer is – double the size [of] the population of people with diabetes… 60 million people live in… [a] rural market.“