A tech-enabled maternity startup is teaming up with a South Bay hospital system to open a joint clinic in Palo Alto, blending midwife-led outpatient care with hospital labor and delivery services. The clinic, located at 4300 El Camino Real, Suite 201, is set to open in December, with Millie and El Camino Health partnering on maternity care.
The partnership pairs Millie, a tech-enabled women's health clinic startup, with El Camino Health to launch co-branded joint maternity clinics, according to Healthcare Innovation. The outlet reports that Millie and El Camino Health plan to open more clinics across Silicon Valley and the Bay Area beyond this first Palo Alto location, with Millie founder and CEO Anu Sharma noting the partnership follows the company joining UCSF Health's clinically integrated network earlier in 2026. That earlier move connected Millie's midwifery care model with UCSF specialists in the East Bay, as detailed by Millie's own account of the UCSF arrangement.
Millie delivers care in hospital settings and partners with health systems to integrate maternity services and address OB access issues, per the same Healthcare Innovation report. The partnership brings Millie's maternity care model into collaboration with a health system.
Why Millie Says Midwives Fit Most Pregnancies
Sharma estimates that 75 to 80 percent of U.S. pregnancies are low risk, with another 10 to 15 percent falling into a moderate-risk category, and only 5 to 7 percent, or at most 10 percent, classified as high risk, according to Healthcare Innovation's reporting. Per Sharma's estimate, midwives are the right providers for low- to moderate-risk pregnancies, and midwife-led maternity care can lead to better outcomes, less intervention, more vaginal births, and fewer C-sections.
Sharma has pointed to a broader U.S. shortage of OBs and said one-third of the country is designated as maternity care deserts, the outlet reports. She has also said that people of color, particularly Black people, experience worse maternal outcomes in the U.S., and has described the overall U.S. maternity care model as one that has not evolved in about 75 years.
The Millie care model emphasizes continuous, holistic, proactive maternity care, including postpartum support, education, emotional support, lactation, nutrition, and mental health, combining midwifery-led care with OB support for patients who need it. The company uses technology to connect care and manage risk between patient visits and measures outcomes using C-section rates, preterm births, NICU stays, maternal mental health, and mother-and-baby well-being.
Insurance Coverage and Projected Savings
Millie is in-network with major insurance plans, including Medicaid payers, and the company says its model delivers actuarial savings of 12 to 14 percent, according to Healthcare Innovation. With UCSF, Millie says it is clinically integrated and integrated with the health system's payers, providing access to specialty care on a single electronic health record with seamless payer contracts. Sharma has said Millie plans to make more partnership announcements going forward.
Millie was founded by Sharma after she survived severe postpartum complications, including HELLP syndrome and preeclampsia, following the birth of her daughter, according to the San Francisco Business Times. She partnered with UCSF-trained certified nurse-midwife Talia Borgo to build the company, which launched its first clinic in Berkeley in 2022. In February 2025, Millie raised $12 million in Series A funding co-led by TMV and Foreground Capital, with participation from Pivotal Ventures and the March of Dimes Innovation Fund, the Business Times reported.
El Camino Health's Delivery Volume and Track Record
El Camino Health delivered 4,761 babies at its Mountain View hospital in 2023 and has been recognized on Newsweek's list of America's Best Maternity Hospitals, according to El Camino Health. The health system operates the South Bay's only dedicated Center for Women and Newborns, alongside acute care hospital facilities in Mountain View and Los Gatos.
Models like Millie's became regulatorily feasible after California's Senate Bill 1237, enacted in 2020, authorized certified nurse-midwives in the state to practice independently and attend low-risk pregnancies without physician supervision starting January 1, 2021, according to the California Nurse-Midwives Association.
A Statewide Squeeze on Maternity Units
The Palo Alto clinic arrives amid a broader contraction in California maternity care. Between 2012 and February 2025, 56 California hospitals closed their maternity care units, increasing travel distances to birth facilities for more than one million California women of reproductive age, according to the California Health Care Foundation. Overall California birth totals dropped 24 percent between 2009 and 2023, the foundation reports, even as the state recorded roughly 400,000 live births in 2023, with Medi-Cal covering 41 percent of those births and private insurance covering 53 percent.
