Former AOL Digital Chief and founder of startup incubator Launchbox Digital John McKinley’s mother fell ill recently and McKinley turned to the web to find answers on how and where to seek care for his elderly parent. McKinley found a distressing lack of resources that helped adults find the right care providers for elderly parents. He found that many of the existing services were targeted towards the care providers instead of the consumer, with services often focused completely on making sales commissions off of connecting seniors with care facilities. And McKinley found that none of the existing services offered a user-friendly web interface to find customized care. McKinley vowed to create a portal aimed towards the consumer and today, is officially launching OurParents, a free elder care matching service, focused on assisting adult children with aging parents find the right care solution that meets the parents’ and family’s health care needs.
OurParents’s transparency is derived from the site not making money from any matches that take place via the site. OurParents aims to provide an unbiased service that helps families sort through the decision of whether in-home care, a senior community, assisted living facility, nursing home care, or hospice care is best for their elderly parents. And the site does a lot of the fact-finding work for you.
OurParents offers descriptions, services, photos, quality ratings, price info, etc. for over 65,000 care providers and allows consumers to filter search results by location, cost, quality, distance and special requirements. Among the site’s features that are particularly useful to consumers when assessing a senior care facility are free detailed reports about each facility, which includes access to the Medicare ratings, detailed audit findings, community data, and information about nearby hospitals and clinics. Users can also access provider information such as real life stories about a provider, news stories, bankruptcy filings and nursing home abuse allegations.
OurParents includes a tool called the Care Options Advisor, that lets a person describe the circumstances about a senior citizen (health, age, priorities, etc.) in an entry form and be guided to the type of care options that make the most sense to consider. Once users pick a provider that they are interested in, OurParents will contact the care provider for the user. OurParents currently doesn’t advertise on the site but plans to make money from paid services the site plans to offer users in the future, including insurance and health related products.
Enurgi, which was acquired by health care provider Univita earlier this year, provides a similar service, but Enurgi is targeted toward connecting the elderly with home caregivers, a small segment of the elderly care population. And Energi took a cut of transactions that took place via its site. Because it’s completely free, OurParents is sure to be a popular destination for adults looking to find unbiased and detailed information on care for elderly loved ones.
Interesting, from what I can tell it’s just really a copy of what New Lifestyles (www.newlifestyles.com) has been doing for years now?
This could be a huge market.
One smart move they have made is focusing on the adult children of senior citizens. Most companies and web sites tend to think that the senior is the customer, which couldn’t be more wrong.
I just checked out the site and I like it. The Care Options Advisor is pretty cool. My family is currently figuring out what do do with my 93 year old grandma so I used her as an example to test it out. Very helpful.
The wizard I just mentioned should be the focus, on the general search.
Jeff-
Thanks for the feedback. I think you are right – the Care Options Advisor tool is what we want more people to have a chance to experience, because it can help identify other good care options for a family to consider that may not be on their radar screen. The challenge is that we also have a lot of people who just want to immediately dive in to see the “best nursing homes in Denver”.
We plan on doing some A/B testing on the home page to find the right balance. The good news from our alpha program was that we were getting really good time-on-site and very low bounch rates, which was very encouraging.
Any other feedback greatly appreciated – you can reach me at john at ourparents dot com.
http://www.home...eassistance.com
im very interested
Im big on this space. Anyone is free to contact me if they are looking for partners in this area.
Twitter/gladrobot
There are many sites out there that do some of this. My understanding of OurParents is some of the backend tech they have is unique. The value is in the data. Another company to watch that owns the data side of this business is SNAPforSeniors.com. They have been packaging and selling the data for a number of years and have put together a good model.
In my past dealing, SNAPforSeniors was a lead selling agent to homes. From looking at the Ourparents site, it looks like they are trying to be something free to both the family and the care facility. I think having an independent source is crucial.
Great idea, doesn’t matter if there are similar sites on the internet . The more of these we have the better, there is a market and a need. Koodos for actually making it happen.
Very nice site. I am probably 5-10 years away from facing this with my own folks, so can relate. Think the market is absolutely HUGE. I like the whole positioning too.
I was wondering when people were going to start focusing on this sector more. My mom is a baby boomer, and seeing her hit her sixties last year brought home just how many people are going to retire over the next two decades. Smart bet to want to be the consumer advocate. Good luck!
p.s. the emails dont work.
Simon,
can you elaborate on what the issue is?
Emails are not sent out immediately. They are held in a queue before sending in order to prevent spam or bot agents from improper use of the various mailing capabilities.
feel free to contact me directly so that we can try and resolve if there is an issue – amit at ourparents dot com
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
answers@ourparents.com
Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try
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This is for both partner and answer emails.
Simon,
thank you. this should be fixed now
That is a very well thought out site. Great design.
Is it just me, or doesn’t that picture with the senior citizens and their price tags looks like pulled off the Death Race 2000 movie? http://www.imdb...itle/tt0072856/
I like it! The info page for a facility is pretty sweet. Liked seeing average prices of care in my city, but will say the nursing home costs were a lot higher than I thought!
It a great site with huge potential to help adult children with aging parents. Just wondering more about the business model though.
Yes, I am curious as to what the business model is, or is it truly an altruistic endeavor?
There are logical value-added services outside of the key care provider decision (which we view as sacrosanct,due to its importance) that we intend to offer.
Why use “sacrosanct” in your dodge answer? I see it’s one of your favorite terms to use when answering questions of this kind… Can’t you simply answer the question in a straightforward manner?
thx,
Evan
I also attempted to send an e-mail regarding becoming a listed care provider to the address on the site–it came back as undeliverable.
cindy – should be fixed by now, but if not – send directly to amit at ourparents dot com
John,
You and your staff have done a magnificent job with your Ourpatents website. I found the site to be easy to navigate – the information very useful and comprehensive. We all have or will have to come to terms with the care of our elderly loved ones. Your site makes it so much easier. Thank you very much.
Gerry Newland
How do i update the information for my Assisted Living? Thank you
I have a question. Where did you get the data you display on your site. It seems copied from SNAPforSeniors.com and Medicare.gov. How did you get their permission to use it given their strict terms of use and license fees.
If Kathi Greco wants to update her listing should she contact SNAPforSeniors.com? Then how long before OurParents updates the data from them?
Regarding these senior care provider search sites, there are THREE broad models.
One is the pay-to-play or lead referral model whereby the only companies who get listed or referred are those who pay to be in the search results. A variation of this model are the sites that actually have a sales rep call you in an effort to “connect: you with a provider. The main downside to this is you may not be referred to the best provider if they have not paid to be in the directory. A Place for Mom is an example of this type of model.
The second model are directory sites that are user-populated meaning all the companies listed are those who created a listing for their company although you can get preferred listings if you pay, 99% of the companies are there for free. The main downside to this model is again, you may not get an exhaustive listing of providers in your area. An example of this type of model is TheSeniorList.com.
The last model includes ALL providers in a given zip code (and may offer providers who purchase an “enhanced” listing priority exposure). This model is rare because its very expensive to find and list all providers (but you can do it because all the info is available from various licensing agencies at the state levels). While many government sites provide these searches many companies in this space are focusing on a specific category. I believe SNAP for seniors does this just for Assisted Living but will probably expand. There are companies who do it for all categories but consumers never see them. This is what most EAP and work-life companies provide as an employee benefit but they charge employers for this who in turn offer the services to employees as a benefit.
The space is moving super fast and changing daily. Our company, SeniorCareMarketer.com, works with many of these vendors so we have a pretty good handle on the space and try to remain objective
Anyone interested in the space can contact me via Facebook. I’d love to chat with you.
Mark Willaman
Founder
SeniorCareMarketer.com
Hey- Just wondering where the Snap vs ourParents data stealing comments went. Did OurParents steal the the Snap data like everybody thought??
lame.
I think the site is great. Now is it unbiased? Far from it.
How will they profit? They will end up selling ad space, featured listing, referral info to the highest bidder.
This money will come from LTC, Reverse Mort, or anything that coincides with the senior mkt. Now does the highest bidder mean they are the best option for seniors? No. So there goes your unbiased tag line. They have to make money. The second you take a dollar, you are biased…
There are a lot of players in this mkt place and many of them are just out for commissions. I work with seniors every day… we provide the best care-advice we can and go from there. People trust us and our happy with our service. That’s why we’ve grown so fast.
A great design, tons of data, and than what? People want to talk to someone that’s been there before… not see the theology make up of a city the assisted living facility is in. (great for visuals though)
99% of these adult children are living 10 miles away from where their loved will live. They already know everything about the area. What good is annual weather report? They live there.
People just want great care & great advice. Don’t over complicate it.
The ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM is the fact that families WON’T PAY for a true consultant or GCM. A person who has no ties to any facility. a. As long as the families won’t pay out of their own pocket…. the current mkt will always be there.
Feedback to late commenters:
Stat: Over 7MM seniors actually live far away from their immediate families – that’s why community profile info is included.
Our goal is to have a service that is accessible and useful to middle class families, not just the upper middle class and above families lead gen players focus on.
User reviews have become an important complement to the federal and state quality data we have. It is the voice of families with actual experience with a provider that helps paint a more complete picture.
Consultants can play a huge role in helping a family manage a transition – we’re fans of them.
We are happy to report we are already assisting thousands of people each day.