Doctors on Demand

Dallas-based app meets growing need for on-demand healthcare for Texas kids

Dallas-based PediaQ will extend its services to Austin soon.

Photo courtesy of Q.Care

Gone are the days of waiting for hours in a doctor's office full of germs with your sick kid. Meet PediaQ, an innovative children's healthcare app that provides instant care via house calls in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and, soon, Austin.

The desire for on-demand medical services is growing, and healthcare apps like Mend are heeding the call. PediaQ, which launched in Dallas in 2015 and The Woodlands area of Houston in 2016, brings the same services to people's homes — specifically for kids.

From allergic reactions to the need for stitches, PediaQ provides full medical care to children, including onsite testing, lab work, and prescription pickup. Using the app, parents can book an appointment, and a nurse practitioner arrives within an hour. Most nurse practitioners have at least five to 10 years of experience, and they have to complete training with PediaQ prior to service. Their credentials, as well as reviews, are available in the app.

These nurse practitioners treat everything from flu and cold to pink eye. PediaQ accepts most insurance carriers; consumers pay their usual co-pay plus a $25 convenience fee. At the parent's request, the child's urgent care visit information can be sent to his or her pediatrician.

PediaQ has completed more than 3,000 house calls since its launch and has earned hundreds of five-star ratings on Facebook. Now, with an additional $4.5 million in funding, PediaQ is expanding its presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston markets and setting up services in Austin this September. The exact areas of expansion in DFW and Houston are to be determined and will be based on market needs.

"PediaQ will revolutionize how I seek to treat my own children when they are sick," says Stephen Hays, managing partner of Deep Space Ventures and a PediaQ investor, in a release. "The world-class leadership and team at PediaQ made it easy to see the vision and understand how this platform will change the delivery of healthcare."

PediaQ is available from 2-10 pm on weekdays and 8 am-10 pm on weekends. The standard PediaQ fee if not using insurance is $150, but additional fees (lab work, injections, prescription pickup) may apply. To access PediaQ services, simply download the free app or visit the website.

health families apps

Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

You have a better chance of landing a job in Texas than in most other states.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

job market texas wallethub jobs