We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve partnered with CareLinx, a professional caregiver marketplace that empowers families to easily find, hire, manage, and pay licensed caregivers, all online. By partnering with CareLinx, we are going to help their community of over 300,000 caregivers nationwide save time and money on health, dental, vision, and life insurance.

The Story Behind CareLinx

CareLinx was created out of a very personal problem their founder and CEO, Sherwin Sheik, was experiencing. Sheik’s sister has Multiple Sclerosis and his uncle had ALS. As he tried to find and manage home care for both of them, he found the process to be inefficient and expensive, especially for someone with a full-time job or living in a different location. From this struggle, CareLinx was born, along with its mission—empowering individuals to age with grace, dignity, and purpose. CareLinx makes it easy for families to take care of the exhaustive list of administrative tasks associated with managing home care, ranging from scheduling to time tracking to payroll processing. Beyond that, families save as much as 50 percent hiring through CareLinx when compared to a typical brick and mortar agency. Lastly, caregivers on CareLinx earn higher wages, which results in better care. As a result of these higher wages, caregivers are more engaged and able to offer higher quality of care.

CareLinx is making sure people who need to arrange care and receive care are taken care of. However, they aren’t just taking care of the families they serve. It’s a priority for them to also take care of their caregivers, and by partnering with Stride, CareLinx is doing just that.

Rising Health Care Costs and Rising Confusion

Health care costs are on the rise and have been for years. As they continue to go up, picking the right plan has never been more important - or more stressful and confusing. There are deadlines to meet, tons of plans to compare, subsidies to qualify for, and a million confusing terms:What is a metal tier? What’s the difference between copayments and coinsurance? What’s better—an HMO or a PPO?. People who work for themselves face complicated application processes and often pay more than they should for health insurance because they aren’t familiar with subsidies that can decrease their costs. More often than not, they’re left with no guidance when it comes to making these important decisions, and that means they’re spending a lot of time trying to figure out health insurance - time that could be better spent providing home care.

That’s where Stride comes in: we make it easy for independent workers to find health coverage that fits their needs. To get help finding insurance, CareLinx caregivers will answer a few questions, receive a tailored plan recommendation, find out what money-saving subsidies they are eligible to receive, and get enrolled in coverage, all within 10 minutes.

Going Beyond Health Insurance

Stride won’t only be helping the caregivers on CareLinx’s platform with health insurance. Through Stride, they can easily sign up for dental and vision plans designed specifically for independent workers. For those interested in going beyond their personal wellness, Stride offers a suite of options that promote financial wellness including life and accident insurance.

As Stride continues to grow, we will continue to develop and introduce new tools for independent workers. In the meantime, our award-winning, live-person concierge team will be standing by to help these caregivers get answers to their questions so they can get back to doing what they want to be doing.

Learn more about these and other benefits for CareLinx caregivers at http://stride.care/linx.