As we approach the end of this year and look toward the next, here’s what hits home for me: 2023 was a year that changed the caregiving landscape.
It may be tempting to say that about every year, especially coming out of the harshest days of the COVID-19 pandemic — years that upended the way many of us think about care and how we balance caregiving on top of work and other life responsibilities.
But 2023 was historic: not only because it required agility and tenacity in the face of turbulent economic times, but it exposed even further the depth of the care crisis.
For 2023, one phrase comes to mind: love over logistics. Families and employees made it known that they are craving more support to care for their loved ones, and need help tackling the overwhelming logistical and administrative tasks associated with caregiving.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that families are asking for more support. New data and research this year showed us the state of today’s care landscape:
These numbers paint an urgent picture. But they also provide a backdrop for a caregiving ecosystem that is making real progress and providing tangible solutions to families. And this ecosystem saw some big wins in 2023.
From the first-ever White House Executive Orders commemorating and pledging support to family caregivers, to employers celebrated and honored for the ways they support their working caregivers, the spotlight shined on caregiving this year that will have profound impact for many years to come. In so many ways, 2023 has been the year where the entire category surrounding caregiving broke open and unleashed unprecedented momentum.
We certainly felt this momentum at Wellthy. Looking back on 2023, there were some major milestones that reshaped and expanded our work to support family caregivers.
Teen Support and End of Life offerings: Wellthy’s fundamental mission and commitment is to support families with care needs across all phases of life — from ‘birth to bereavement’ as the saying goes. This year, we deepened that commitment by launching two new service lines.
“Teen Support” focuses on supporting families with world-class expertise, technology, and educational resources to help parents navigate the unique complexities of raising a teenager in today’s day and age; and “End of Life and Loss” formalizes what Wellthy’s Care Team has done for years in helping families with the financial, emotional, and administrative tasks and challenges that come with saying goodbye to a loved one. Wellthy even acquired the end-of-life planning startup Lantern to continue to build out the tools, expertise, and resources we can provide during one of the most challenging times we face as humans.
Care Planning: Our friends at Voya Financial said this better than anyone else this year: “There’s a lack of planning around caregiving. It’s a huge issue, whether it’s for ourselves, our children or aging parents."
That’s one of the reasons why we launched our Care Planning solution this year — a digital experience designed by a team of Wellthy caregiving experts that reduces the time, stress, and financial strain of future caregiving responsibilities. Rather than waiting until a crisis emerges, Care Planning empowers families to stay organized, plan ahead, and feel ready to provide the quality of care their loved ones deserve.
New heights, reach, and impact: Beyond new features and experiences, 2023 stands out as a critical year at Wellthy for not just delivering impact — but having that impact felt, seen, and heard with families, workplaces, insurance carriers and health plans, and more broadly in culture. A few wins we’re celebrating as 2023 comes to a close:
So much of what we’ve accomplished and what’s played out in 2023 is setting the stage and building the foundation for a 2024 that will truly change the game for caregivers. We’re bullish on this: while the broader market and economic climate may be unpredictable, what remains a certainty is that caregiving concierge support returns the biggest bang for the benefit buck.
What’s top of mind for us at Wellthy as we look to 2024 and beyond?
We obviously have so much more room to create and build a category for caregiving — one that disrupts healthcare as we know it, and one that reshapes the very definition of what it means to be a caregiver.
But if 2023 was any indication, the promise of 2024 shows a real roadmap for what it will take to meet the diverse needs of families, and provide them with the care infrastructure they need to thrive.
Our guiding lights here at Wellthy are expansion, excellence, and inclusion. These are principles we use internally to ground and center teams on the most important work they can do toward achieving our mission. But they are also anchors that, externally, underscore the agility, responsiveness, creativity, and spirit needed to not just approach big problems like today’s care crisis — but to tackle them and solve them for millions of families around the world.
Here’s to a 2024 where we make immeasurable progress toward that vision.