By Aubrey Rose A. Inosante
STARTUP booking platform NarsToday wants to make nursing and caregiving services more accessible, while creating jobs for healthcare providers including those who have stopped practicing their profession.
About 47% of registered Filipino nurses are not practicing their profession, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Suzette Q. Rosario told BusinessWorld.
“They opted not to because they did not want to work abroad,” she said in an interview. “They have established their businesses, or they are employed elsewhere in a different industry.”
Ms. Rosario said NarsToday wants to contribute to the government’s Private-Public Partnership and efforts to decentralize the healthcare industry to ease the burden on local hospitals.
The NarsToday app allows one to book a nurse to provide duty at their home or at a healthcare facility.
It offers homecare services through its pool of nurses and caregivers for the elderly, mothers and newborns, and even specialized care in post-operation, radiotherapy and dialysis.
For now, the company focus is on new mommies with newborns who need help, said Ms. Rosario, who was inspired to start the platform in December after her family had a hard time trying to get nurses for their two grandmothers.
“I thought if we have a booking [platform] for food, for transportation or cars like Grab and Uber, why not for healthcare?” she said, citing the telemedicine boom at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ms. Rosario, who earlier joined season 9 of the business reality TV program The Final Pitch and became one of the finalists, said she also created a website where nurses could sign up to join the platform.
More than 60 signed up in the first month, she said.
She noted that clients are keener to book their appointments on their Facebook page than on their app because their services are advertised by word-of-mouth. Customers prefer to talk to a real person first.
“We are not running any Facebook or Google ads,” she said. “We rely mostly on people who share posts or people who have experienced our service,” she said.
Ms. Rosario said mothers particularly appreciate their advice on swaddling and proper baby handling. She also said clients sometimes need specialized care, which NarsToday can provide.
NarsToday prices range from P1,440 for caregivers to P3,600 for registered nurses for mother and baby care for 12 hours.
The company also sells gift cards that can be given to expectant mothers in baby showers.
Ms. Rosario said NarsToday’s pool of nurses and caregivers is big enough. She declined to say the exact number.
The app on Google Play has had about 50 downloads.
She said the company employs nurses and caregivers “on demand,” though they are looking at a monthly setup with a competitive salary that is not lower than the prevailing rate of P800 to P900 per service.
