Goldman Sachs wants to change that. Mahmee, a six-year-old maternal healthcare startup, announced the closing of a $9.2 million Series A funding round led by Goldman’s Growth Equity Business.
High rates of maternal mortality in the United States, especially among minority groups, have “become a systemic issue and something that we don’t pay attention to,” said Mahmee founder and CEO Melissa Hanna. “But we can also turn the tide.”
“The reality is that most of the record systems we use to track health information for mothers and babies don’t talk to each other,” Hanna said.
Mahmee creates a unified record for each patient that displays all of a mother’s health data in one place. The service also offers access to a nationwide network of community health care providers, including in-house nurses and care coordinators who provide live support seven days a week. Coordinators monitor health needs, provide referrals to healthcare professionals and answer questions and concerns of pregnant women.
The company also works directly with institutions by selling their nurse-led coordination programs to a number of health services, medical groups and insurance companies. Mahmee currently has over 750 vendors and organizations in its network in 44 states.
“We were able to create life-saving interventions and point out things that other people may have overlooked by accident or lack of experience,” Hanna said.
Since its launch in 2016, Mahmee has served more than 15,000 women, Hanna said, and those patients are 10% less likely to have a C-section and 50% less likely to give birth prematurely.
“Disparities in access to high-quality maternal and perinatal care contribute to poor health outcomes in underserved communities and substantial costs to the broader health system,” said Suzanne Gauron, Global Head of Launch With GS, a Goldman Sachs program that aims to increase access to capital for underrepresented entrepreneurs and investors. “We believe Mahmee is well positioned to improve the lives of mothers and babies by closing critical opportunity gaps in care and outcomes.”
“If we even scratch the surface of solving this problem for mothers and babies in this country,” Hanna said, “we’ve unlocked billions of dollars of potential here.”
