Topping off a week packed with women’s health stories was maternity care startup Oula’s close of $28M in Series B funding.
Oula’s modern maternity centers combine obstetrics with midwifery to ensure expectant mothers receive comprehensive support throughout their reproductive journeys.
The philosophy behind Oula is that most pregnancy care takes place between visits, so offering in-home support, better education, and virtual access to providers should create a virtuous cycle for improving outcomes.
- Oula also places a heavy emphasis on inclusive care by working with most major payors and Medicaid, as well as its dedicated support for BIPOC parents and families.
- By finding a middle ground between hypermedicalized and non-medical care, Oula’s pair of New York Clinics have delivered a 26% better C-section rate, a 61% lower preterm birth rate, and a 50% better low birth weight rate compared to the city’s benchmarks.
The funding arrives as maternal deaths continue to climb in the US, which leads all other high income countries with 23.8 deaths per 100k births (and an abysmal 55.3 deaths per 100k births for Black women).
- A large part of these discrepancies appears to be due to a lack of access to midwives, certified medical practitioners with expertise in low-risk pregnancies, which also see far worse reimbursement than physicians.
- Oula makes the case that the US’ lack of proper reimbursement mechanisms for midwives is a key driver of its poor outcomes, and tackling that issue is a core component of its mission.
The Series B will help Oula round out its platform with services like preconception coaching and enhanced miscarriage support, while also allowing it to scale to more markets to rival established players such as Maven Clinic and Progeny Health.
The Takeaway
Oula is looking to modernize maternity care not only by wrapping a tech-enabled bubble around traditional obstetrics, but also by catering to the specific needs of the mothers and health plans that it serves. It’ll have its work cut out for it scaling from a few New York clinics to a nationwide platform, but it’s hard to ask for better timing or a greater need.
