The Meira’s: Leading Healthcare in Brazil

This week was dedicated to uncovering Brazil’s greatest needs in diabetes prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Gabriela Meira, a Deloitte consultant and dear friend, offered up a week of her time and energy to setup interviews and tours of countless influencers, deliverers, and recipients of both public and private healthcare in Brazil. Her family business Interne Home Care, founded and led by her mother Paula Meira, employs approximately 700 health professionals and is the largest home health company in the North / Northeast of Brazil. Together they are a dynamic duo (to say the least) and extremely generous for all they’ve done for Project HOPE this week!

Interne Home Care is based in Recife and started as a branch of Interim Home Health Care, a US-based home health company with provider (hospital) and health plan partnerships to deliver care. Eleven years ago, Paula invested in Interne as an independent venture that was best tailored to the needs of Brazilian health plans and patients. Now a larger organization with diverse home care offerings, Interne Home Care has created a unique model for diagnosing, treating, and preventing diseases in its region.

Their three lines of business CuraBem (Get Well), DurmaBem (Sleep Well), and FiqBem (Stay Well) address the treatment of diseases, specialties in COPD, and a dedication to chronic care prevention and treatment respectively. The latter is especially progressive in the Brazilian market. Although Interne focuses on the private sector, the business has been able to demonstrate the long-term cost savings in prevention and expanded to offer these services with coverage from many private plans in Recife. They treat countless people with diabetes and chronic care patients (typically older and with multiple chronic conditions).

In addition, Recife is known as the “silicon valley” of healthcare in Brazil with an entire district providing some of the best facilities and medical professionals in the country. The combination of public and private players in Recife made it a good target for research to understand the current state of diabetes and chronic disease in Brazil. Gabriela and Paula helped schedule a full itinerary of meetings for Project HOPE including national Minister of Health, state-level hospital, and local community health contacts. (Interview notes and insights will come soon!)

This research would not have been possible without the Meira’s. By the end of the visit they were strong supporters saying… “anything for Project HOPE!”

Gabi and Paula in front on an Interne poster: "Because you value life, and we value you."