Like many health systems, located in Roseville, CA Advent Health The mission of making healthcare accessible to everyone is being pursued. Shelly Trumbo, Adventist’s vice president of benefits, said achieving this vision will require strategic investments in the care provided outside its hospitals and clinics.This is why the health system Announce Partnerships Emcara Health last week.
Emcara Health is a national provider group serving approximately 50,000 patients using a value-based advanced primary care model. pilot wellThe Population Health Analytics Subsidiary popular healthcare roll out The company last October. Emcara’s care teams treat patients where they are — whether at home, in a shelter or on the street — and help coordinate other in-person care as needed.
Trumbo says Adventist-Emcara partnership will push health systems through engagement California Advancing and Innovating MediCal (CalAIM) Programwhich provides providers with state funding to improve health outcomes within medical Participants by broadening the care delivery model.
There are certain populations, such as those without housing, that brick-and-mortar healthcare providers will never reach. To address this, Emcara is partnering with health systems “as an extension of its capabilities,” the company’s CEO Eric Galvin said in an interview.
Emcara’s nursing team includes integrative nursing physicians, field nurses, advanced practice providers, community health workers, and nursing coordinators. The team also works with pharmacists, nutritionists, physical therapists, social workers and palliative care physicians to develop holistic care plans for their patient populations.
In partnership with Adventist, Emcara is deploying its care team to California’s Central Valley for primary and preventive care visits. These care teams assess not only the patient’s health, but also their environment.
“This partnership focuses on the social determinants of health because these people are not always at home in general,” Calvin said.
After these initial visits, Galvin said Emcara’s care team will act as “air traffic controllers” to ensure patients have access to any specialty Adventist care they may need. They will also direct patients to use community resources, such as healthy food distribution programs or organizations that provide free transportation to health care visits, to help improve the social determinants of their health.
“Adventist recognizes that U.S. health care spending is not investing enough in broader determinants of health,” Trumbo said. “This partnership will address new opportunities through CalAIM, allowing us to move care upstream and meet where they are.”
To measure the success of the three-year partnership, Adventist will track metrics such as graduation rates (when patients no longer need Emcara’s services) and whether emergency room utilization and hospitalizations are declining. The health system will also track improvements in social determinants of health, such as access to housing and healthy food for the Medi-Cal population, according to Trumbo.
Emcara will first track the number of patients it is able to participate in. It will also look at metrics related to patient health outcomes, such as changes in medication adherence or the number of patients who have follow-up appointments with Adventist specialists.
Galvin noted that while Emcara’s partnership with Adventist is focused on serving the Medicaid population, it could grow in the future to include people who are Medicare Advantage or those who buy insurance from state exchanges through the Affordable Care Act.
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