Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs
Magnolia team, front row from left: Liz Tarullo, Kate Farley, Alice Allen-Redfern and Lama Sibai. Backrow: Phillip Procyk and Volker Einsfeld. (Magnolia Photo)
When my ailing 86-year-old dad refused food and water last winter, the guidance from his longtime primary care doctor was useless bordering on cruel: “Take him to the ER.”
My dad suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, had limited mobility and the trip would require an aid car. The experience would have left him upset and disoriented. My mom, my sister and I, all at his bedside, were flummoxed and distraught.
The team behind Magnolia, a Seattle startup providing virtual support and guidance for caregivers, don’t want others to go through what we did.
The company launched last year and recently raised $3.5 million to fund its effort. The lead investor for the seed round is Village Global, a firm whose chairman is LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman with investors including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
CEO Liz Tarullo was motivated to co-found Magnolia based on her own caregiving experience, helping her mom take care of her dad when he had a stroke at age 55. Tarullo was only 25.
The responsibility of providing for dependent loved ones requires skills and knowledge that can be difficult to come by, and their needs can be complicated and evolving. Yet support for caregivers is limited.
We expect to be able to figure this out on our own, but that kind of self-reliance “is a myth,” Tarullo said. “Our mission is to really transform how caregiving is seen and valued in our society, and create a world where everyone is cared for.”
Before Magnolia, Tarullo was at Amazon for more than three years. Her roles included working on the founding team for the tech giant’s healthcare service, called Amazon Care, which offered a hybrid of virtual, in-home primary care and urgent care services. The business launched in 2019 and folded three years later.
Magnolia is currently tailored for caregivers providing for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s, but it plans to broaden that focus.
The startup offers a suite of services that begin with a virtual consultation to understand the diagnosis of the person being cared for, who is involved with the caregiving and what supports are needed. The company works on a fee-for-service model and partners with multiple insurance companies for reimbursement through the patient’s coverage.
The Magnolia team, which includes healthcare providers, social workers and community health workers, uses tools incorporating artificial intelligence to come up with a roadmap and action plan to guide the caregivers. The startup has an app with resources for problem solving common situations. It’s developing a AI co-pilot dubbed Maggie to provide more accessible support.
The platform also provides specific services for caregivers’ mental health, such as group counseling. Caregivers receive approximately monthly check-ins with the Magnolia team.
Holistic model
Dr. Lama Sibai is head of medical services for Magnolia, and has worked for nearly a decade with dementia patients as a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Washington’s Valley Medical Center.
It’s difficult, she said, providing a dementia diagnosis when there’s little treatment and no cures available.
“I just felt like a cog in the wheel,” Sibai said. She was delivering this terrible news to people, and “sending them out into the world to navigate this on their own.”
She began developing a holistic model of care including an interdisciplinary team to support patients and caregivers. She collected quantitative and qualitative data to understand the needs of caregivers. Sibai learned that they didn’t clearly understand dementia and Alzheimer’s, or what to expect as it progressed. They didn’t know which providers could help address which situations, or how to advocate for the healthcare their love one needed.
Sibai’s effort grew and garnered multiple awards, but she wanted to reach a wider population. That led her to join Magnolia and apply her expertise and approach to a platform that’s supported by AI.
One of Sibai’s big wins at Valley Medical was cutting unnecessary emergency department visits by 50%.
A dementia or Alzheimer’s patient visiting an ER “can come out in a worse situation from a health and mental health perspective,” she said. “It is not a solution.”
My family’s crisis with my dad was ultimately resolved when a close family friend who’s a retired registered nurse stepped in to help with care and advise us.
Magnolia aims to support caregivers upfront so they’re not left with the ER as their prime alternative.
“Our goal is to be proactive and preventative and predictive,” Tarullo said.
The team, investors and insurance
In addition to her work at Amazon Cares, Tarullo is a venture partner with Prufrock Ventures, a firm that includes former startup founders and Amazon alumni. And she’s not the only former leader from Amazon Cares to launch a health startup. In 2022, Erik Cardenas and Mariza Hardin founded Seattle-based Zócalo Health, a virtual care startup serving the Latino population.
Magnolia’s other co-founders are Chief Operating Officer Kate Farley and Chief Technology Officer Volker Einsfeld. Farley was a senior vice president of operations at Seattle’s Limeade and a general manager at RealNetworks for more than a decade, ending in 2010. Einsfeld was CTO for Dolly, a Seattle-based on-demand marketplace for moving services. Dolly was acquired in 2021.
Alice Allen-Redfern is Magnolia’s head of clinical services and Phillip Procyk is the founding principal engineer.
The startup has seven employees on the business and tech side, and additional clinicians and care navigators.
Magnolia’s services are covered by insurance thanks to policies enacted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in January. The startup has partnerships with the major insurers, including United Healthcare, Aetna, Anthem and others. It also participating in a new Medicare program called GUIDE Model that provides reimbursement for caregiver navigation support.
There’s a growing awareness of unmet needs for people with dementia and their caregivers. Fellow Seattle startup Rippl provides virtual health care for dementia patients. Palliative care teams associated with healthcare companies offer support for patients and families.
In addition to Village Global, Magnolia’s investors are Prufrock, Coyote Ventures, Magnify Ventures, Tokio Marine Future Fund, Unseen Capital and VEST Her Ventures.
The startup is serving caregivers in Washington state and plans for a West Coast expansion next year. Magnolia works with area community groups and its content includes local resources and facilities.
“It’s all about understanding the barriers to care,” said Sibai, “and finding solutions.”
