TimelyCare Expands Its Basic Needs Service to Help Colleges Better Support Student Retention

FORT WORTH, Texas  — TimelyCare, education’s most trusted virtual care provider, today announced the significant expansion of its Basic Needs service, introducing new offerings designed to help colleges and universities better support student retention through more coordinated, scalable basic-needs support.

As institutions work to improve student success and persistence, many are confronting a growing challenge: unmet basic needs can significantly disrupt academic progress, well-being, and a student’s ability to remain enrolled. According to the Hope Center Student Basic Needs Survey Report, 79% of college students who stopped attending, or considered dropping out, cited basic needs insecurity as a reason. 

While many campuses offer food pantries, emergency aid, and other support resources, the challenge is often not access alone. Students may still struggle to navigate complex processes, act on referrals, or stay engaged long enough to receive meaningful help. At the same time, many institutions lack the staffing capacity, visibility, and operational consistency needed to support growing demand at scale, even with 59% of students experiencing at least one form of basic needs insecurity.

Built to meet rising institutional demand, the expanded offering marks an evolution of TimelyCare’s Basic Needs support into a more flexible, scalable model that helps campuses improve follow-through, strengthen coordination, and support more students without adding staff. With the introduction of Navigate and Connect, TimelyCare can help campuses support more students, more consistently, without requiring them to replace existing systems, staff, or workflows.

Basic Needs Navigate is TimelyCare’s most comprehensive basic-needs offering, designed for institutions seeking a more complete and scalable support model. It helps campuses support students through multiple steps and touchpoints, reduce breakdowns in follow-through after referral, and improve coordination across teams and systems, particularly for more complex or ongoing student needs.

Basic Needs Connect provides a structured entry point for institutions looking to improve intake, visibility, and consistency in basic-needs support. Designed for campuses with budget or readiness constraints, Connect helps bring greater organization to fragmented processes through centralized intake, structured follow-up, and connection to relevant, curated resources that are continuously maintained and updated.

“Colleges and universities need more than referral models to meet the level of student need they’re seeing today,” said Luke Hejl, CEO and Co-Founder of TimelyCare. “By expanding our Basic Needs service line, we’re giving institutions a more scalable way to help students move from need to support with stronger follow-through, better coordination, and a clearer connection to retention and student success.”

Rather than treating basic needs as a standalone access issue, TimelyCare’s approach is built around coordinated support delivery, personalized guidance, and stronger follow-through. By embedding Basic Needs within its broader whole-student wellbeing platform, TimelyCare helps institutions connect this work more directly to student wellbeing, mental health, and persistence priorities, while creating a more cohesive experience for students navigating multiple, overlapping challenges.

The expanded Basic Needs service line also serves as a capacity extension model for campuses working to meet growing demand without increasing staff burden. Structured intake, clearer workflows, coordinated follow-up, and stronger visibility into support activity can help institutions reduce manual processes, improve consistency, and better understand where students may be losing momentum before receiving help.

With the introduction of Navigate and Connect, TimelyCare is expanding its Basic Needs service line into a more flexible, scalable model for coordinated student support. The result is an approach that helps institutions strengthen support delivery, extend staff capacity, and better align basic-needs support with broader student retention goals.