Since the at-home primary care provider Patina launched, it has been busy forming partnerships with some of the largest payers in the country.
The Philadelphia-based company has done so with UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), Cigna (NYSE: CI) and Aetna.
As a way to provide a better experience for their Medicare Advantage (MA) patients, Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) has now also partnered with Patina.
“Working with these large, national Medicare Advantage partners allows them to offer a better experience and better outcomes to their MA members,” Patina CEO Jack Stoddard told Home Health Care News. “Because we’re built only to serve people 65 and older, we’re really experts on this journey of aging. They realize that this is a way to get a modern health care experience to their members. Partnering with them helps us get more exposure and awareness so that we can attract more patients.”
Patina is a venture capital-backed provider that offers a holistic approach to primary care for seniors both virtually and in the home.
“What we found for older adults is that very short and reactive sick visits that you most often get in primary care — not only is that not convenient, but it doesn’t do the job,” Stoddard said. “We flipped that on its head and we’ve created a new model of primary care that is really what everybody deserves. The model takes the time to get to know you, understand who you are, what’s important to you and the full context around your values, preferences and goals. Then we help create a personalized care plan for you to help you implement that.”
The partnership with Humana will — among other things — expand the primary care options for Humana MA members in the Philadelphia area.
As MA penetration continues to grow, Patina is capitalizing on the continued interest in consumers having a choice about how they want to use their insurance, Stoddard said.
“For us, we’re all about helping them navigate their health care, make better decisions and get a better health care experience with primary care at the center,” he said. “What that allows us to do for the patient is ultimately coordinate care across their specialists, across any hospital stays that they have and to really do the legwork in order to make the benefits they have through their MA plans more relevant.”
Humana MA members will now have access to in-home and virtual visits from the Patina team, which include a primary care practitioner and a Patina “health champion.” The health champion assists members with scheduling appointments and coordinating available community resources.
“We’ve built our care model to consist of not just the medical needs but also the behavioral health and the social needs,” Stoddard said. “When you add all that up, from a health plan perspective, they love the fact that we can go wherever their members are — great access and accessibility. We go to communities where brick-and-mortar clinics would never be able to bring this type of care to.”
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