Millie, a midwifery-led provider, is teaming up with El Camino Health, a nonprofit health system in the Bay Area, to launch a joint maternity clinic.
The co-branded clinic, set to open in December, will be in Palo Alto. It will combine Millie’s midwifery care model with El Camino’s labor and delivery services and broader specialist network. The goal is to offer an integrated pregnancy, birth and postpartum experience.
“At El Camino Health, we're always looking at innovative ways to enhance care and meet the evolving needs of families in our community,” Dan Woods, CEO of El Camino Health, said in an announcement. “We’re proud to be recognized as one of America’s Best Maternity Hospitals, and together with Millie's patient-centered mission, we're making the maternity care experience available to more families from pregnancy through postpartum care.”
There are a number of factors driving increased attention to midwives, who can oversee most pregnancies, except those that are high risk. As health systems face OB shortages, they must consider new care models to augment existing capacity, “with midwifery care as a key pillar” of that strategy, Anu Sharma, founder and CEO of Millie, told Fierce Healthcare in an advanced interview. At the same time, patients are seeking better outcomes and a more holistic care journey, per Sharma.
“They have been part of the U.S. healthcare system, but in a massively underutilized and very narrow way,” Sharma said of midwives. Studies consistently show that midwives are the optimal providers for over 80% of pregnancies that are classified as low-to-moderate risk, with lower C-section rates and higher patient satisfaction scores.
Millie provides care from preconception to menopause by certified nurse midwives, family nurse practitioners specializing in women’s health and doulas. The company also staffs its own OBs. Millie is deeply clinically integrating with El Camino for seamless referrals to labor & delivery and high-risk pregnancy care. Millie also accepts the same insurance as El Camino to ensure continuity of care.
“This is a deeper level of integration, where we’re integrating into the service line fully, as really an extension of the service line,” Sharma noted.
The traditional maternity care journey in the U.S. is divided into trimesters and overseen by an OB. Patients may often not have their first visit until the end of their first trimester. “In that window, a lot of things can happen,” Sharma said, citing ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages. What patients need is wraparound support addressing the whole person, per Sharma.
Millie helps address lactation support, miscarriage management, mental health, nutrition and postpartum needs. It does home visits after birth and more frequent virtual follow-ups than the usual post-birth checkup. The company’s providers refer out for social or specialty care needs, leveraging Millie’s network of partners.
Additionally, the Millie app features several resources, including a mental health curriculum, guidance on nutrition and an AI agent, Maia, which provides 24/7 answers to patient questions, appointment management and pregnancy care reminders. For clinicians, Millie is also using ambient clinical documentation and charting tools to extract and structure data that traditionally remains siloed in EHRs.
Millie’s proprietary AI technology is built to detect and address risks earlier, automatically flag potential concerns based on patient and provider data, and focus clinical attention on urgent needs.
Founded in 2022, Millie has focused on scaling across California. Staffed by nurse-midwives and doulas, Millie can care for low-risk pregnancies at its clinics. Over time, it has expanded its offerings to include preconception counseling and gynecology services, plus perimenopause and menopause care. The Palo Alto clinic is expected to be part of a broader footprint of clinics that Millie and El Camino plan to open.