Closing Gaps Between Health Plans and Home Care: Inside Avanlee Care’s Next Chapter
StartUp Health community member Avanlee Christine, CEO & Founder of Avanlee Care, shares how a caregiver-first approach is helping health plans close communication gaps, boost outcomes, and reimagine how families care for aging adults, proving that innovation can thrive far beyond traditional tech hubs.
The Challenge
For millions of aging Americans, quality care depends on an invisible workforce of unpaid family caregivers. Yet most health plans lack a structured way to communicate with them. Nearly 60 percent of Medicare Advantage members rely on informal caregivers for communication, which leaves care coordination fragmented and inconsistent.
Avanlee Christine saw the disconnect firsthand. Drawing on her own caregiving experience, she set out to build technology that supports families, strengthens relationships with health plans, and helps seniors remain at home longer.
Under the Hood
Avanlee Care is a secure digital hub that links families and health plans. Caregivers can schedule annual wellness visits, manage vaccinations and chronic condition appointments, coordinate transportation, track wellness, and streamline pharmacy and medication delivery. Health plan teams, in turn, gain a formal, auditable way to collaborate with the family member who often manages a member’s day-to-day care.
Early partnerships helped prove the model at scale. The team integrated with Walmart’s online pickup and delivery API to coordinate OTC and grocery needs, then applied that learning to rapidly integrate with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs for prescription transparency and fulfillment.
The platform also preserves mission-critical caregiver features that make it sticky for families, including wellness check-ins, resources, and time tracking. The platform not only simplifies coordination but also quantifies impact, surfacing tangible value such as You saved 38 minutes today or You saved 2 hours and 37 minutes this week.
The business impact is just as clear. For Medicare Advantage plans, even a single completed annual wellness visit can generate returns that cover the platform’s cost many times over. “It hits,” Avanlee says. “When we demo the platform, a lot of the health plan leaders are caregivers themselves.”
By formalizing how plans engage with family caregivers, Avanlee Care helps improve medication adherence, close care gaps, raise CAHPS scores, and support member satisfaction and retention. Today, Avanlee Care is partnering with innovative payers to bring this workflow directly into plan operations.
The Turning Point
After four years of relentless fundraising, Avanlee made a pivotal decision: stop pitching and start listening. By shifting focus from raising money to understanding customer needs, she unlocked new momentum.
“We decided to focus on building for health plans and caregivers instead of chasing capital,” she says. “That’s when everything started to click.”
That focus led to Avanlee Care’s first venture investor. The connection came inbound after a StartUp Health interview highlighted the company’s traction and mission, prompting outreach from a VC impressed by the progress and staying power. What began as a survival strategy became the foundation for sustainable growth, and a path to scaling with tier-two and tier-three regional plans that can move quickly on contracting.
Balancing Motherhood and Mission
As Avanlee built her company, she was also raising her son, Adam. The dual journey of entrepreneurship and motherhood has shaped how she leads with empathy, resilience, and clear purpose.
“It’s been very hard,” she says. “Having investors like Esther Dyson, and my mom, who became my son’s primary caregiver, carried me through the last four years.”
Adam has traveled alongside his mother since infancy, often joining her at meetings and conferences. “He’s seen what it means to build something from the ground up,” Avanlee says. “And I hope one day he’ll be proud of how far we’ve come together.”
Her experience adds a powerful dimension to Avanlee Care’s mission. The product was built by someone who understands the daily realities of caregiving at home and at work, which is why the team preserved caregiver-centric features even while leading sales conversations with hard outcomes for plans.
Beyond the Hubs
Headquartered in Billings, Montana, Avanlee Care is proving that world-class innovation does not have to start in Silicon Valley or New York. Operating from a region that understands rural access and distance, the team is closely aligned with the realities of aging at home and the logistics families navigate every week.
The company also benefits from the mentorship of notable backers like Esther Dyson, whose early support provided crucial guidance during the company’s formative years. Building outside traditional tech centers has been an advantage, Avanlee notes, because it keeps the team focused on families who are juggling distance, caregiving, and access challenges every day.
What’s Next
Avanlee Care is expanding partnerships with Medicare Advantage plans nationwide and preparing for its next growth phase. The team is focused on helping leaders in quality, risk, and member engagement use caregiver relationships to improve satisfaction, Star Ratings, and retention. The near-term go-to-market centers on regional plans with 50,000 to 300,000 members, with a target of onboarding and working with multiple health plans in 2026.
“The fastest growing population in America is over 65,” Avanlee notes. “If we can fully integrate family caregivers into the healthcare ecosystem, we can transform how aging adults are supported at home.”
The Takeaway
Avanlee Care’s journey underscores the power of resilience, timing, and empathy in health innovation. By focusing on customers, building from outside the mainstream, and championing caregivers, StartUp Health community member Avanlee Christine is reshaping what it means to empower care. It is also a reminder of the value of community storytelling. A StartUp Health interview helped catalyze inbound venture interest, while collaboration inside the StartUp Health network continues to open doors for partnerships and scale.
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Published: Oct 30, 2025
Produced by Nicole Kinsey
