HANOVER, New Hampshire—Maribel Health, a turnkey partner for health systems looking to design, build and operate a full continuum of advanced home and community services, announced the completion of a $25 million Series A funding round led by General Catalyst. Maribel combines deep operating expertise with novel technology to help its partners design, build and operate advanced clinical care capabilities in the home and community, including hospital-at-home, to sustainably expand total system capacity. Ultimately, Maribel’s mission is to make home the center of the health system so that all patients have access to high-quality, reliable and compassionate care where they live and increasingly work.
"This is the first step in a journey – for us and our partners," said Co-Founder Adam Groff. “Over the next ten years, health systems will need to use advances in AI, robotics, and workflow technology to meet the demands of an aging population and shrinking workforce. By creating the infrastructure to support those changes – changes which can inevitably push more care into the home and community and out of overcrowded ERs and hospital floors – we can help that future arrive sooner and safer for our partners, their staff, and their patients.”
According to Maribel, the new funding will be used to accelerate growth with Maribel's initial partners, to attract and onboard the talent required to serve its collaborators worldwide and to support continued investment and development of Maribel’s technology platform to manage the clinical workflows, care complexities and logistics of providing advanced care safely and effectively in the home and community.
"The combination of patient preference, evolving technology capabilities, Emergency Department and hospital congestion combined with workforce shortages are collectively driving the home to be the default site of care,” said Dr. Ronald Paulus, Maribel co-founder and chief executive officer. "Hospital at home is just one example of a broad range of advanced care in the home that can be delivered with improved clinical outcomes, greater efficiency and importantly, enhanced patient and consumer experience.”
Through its creation strategy, General Catalyst works with industry leaders to create new companies that seek to positively shape the industries they are in. Maribel launched in late 2021 as part of General Catalyst’s “hatch” program. Maribel is led by proven physician founders and executives Ronald Paulus, MD (CEO Mission Health, chief innovation and administrative officer Geisinger, and CEO and co-founder CareScience), and Adam Groff, MD (co-founder at Welbe Health, GoHealth Urgent Care and Better Life Partners, and Hospice president and chief medical officer, BAYADA Home Health Care). Maribel said it aims to build the future of advanced care in the home and community by creating solutions that integrate deeply with health systems and reduce friction for caregivers, patients and families. Maribel provides clinical workflows, operating capacity, training, automation and technology so clinical teams can reliably deliver high-quality and affordable care as an integrated extension of their system outside the walls of the hospital or outpatient clinic.
Maribel’s model reflects its decades-long understanding of the unique challenges facing health systems and home health care operators, and an underlying philosophy that “more” does not always mean “better.” Caregivers with simpler workflows are happier, more efficient and deliver higher quality care more consistently. Health systems that leverage appropriate, lower-acuity sites of care can enhance patient access with improved economics. Home health operators with appropriately supported and trained staff can serve new patients and grow their core business. Patients who are discharged safely and sooner—or who receive all of their care via hospital-at-home—are more satisfied with their care, are less likely to be readmitted, and spend more time surrounded by the comfort and care of those who love them most.
“As a CEO who led the transformation of a nationally-recognized health system over nearly a decade, I understand personally how challenging care model redesign can be at every level. Maribel is here to support and enable health systems to successfully operate as advanced care shifts to the home, and I’m absolutely thrilled at the phenomenal team we’ve assembled to support our partners and ensure that we meet those challenges, as partners together."
In addition to the founders, Maribel's core leadership team includes physicians, advanced practice providers, nurses, health care entrepreneurs and technologists with experience in organizing and delivering advanced care at home and building technology-enabled health care companies. Collectively, the Maribel team has overseen more than 15,000 hospital-at-home admissions, led the design of eight successful advanced homecare programs, advised more than 100 hospitals and health systems, and designed, developed and deployed technology used in the care of more than 8 million patients.
In conjunction with this financing, Maribel also officially announced founding anchor partnerships with Mercy Health System and BAYADA Home Health Care in separate, joint statements. Both partnerships involve the end-to-end design, build, and operation of hospital-at-home programs that can serve as a chassis for other advanced homecare models including community-based palliative care, SNF-at-home, and mobile integrated health.
