A five-year pilot project launched by California's Medicaid program that addressed social determinants of health in high-risk, high-utilization patients reduced costs by almost $400 per member per year and cut down on ED visits and hospitalizations.

An innovative program designed to improve access to healthcare services for California's most at-risk Medicaid patients reduced per-patient costs by almost $400 per year during the five-year length of the program, according to a new study.

The Whole Person Care program, which ran from 2016 to 2021, enrolled 247,887 Medi-Cal members, according to a review by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Run through 25 pilot projects covering 26 counties, the $3.6 billion program connected participants not only with primary care and mental health care providers, but more than 500 social service organizations, housing support groups and other resources aimed at addressing social determinants of health.

As a result, the program saw 45 fewer hospitalizations and 130 fewer Emergency Department visits per 1,000 beneficiaries (compared to a control group), and a reduction in Medi-Cal payments of $383 per person per year.

“The Whole Person Care program aimed to promote access to care for the most vulnerable Medi-Cal beneficiaries, and evidence suggests that the program was successful in developing needed infrastructure and delivering services needed to support effective care,” Nadereh Pourat​, associate director of the UCLA center, head of its Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program, and lead author of the report, said in a press release. “Patients received more care and had improved outcomes.”

The program is one of many that healthcare organizations across the country are launching to address health inequity by identifying non-clinical barriers to healthcare access, called social determinants of health. Advocates say that by addressing those barriers, providers can improve access and clinical outcomes while promoting long-term health and wellness.

In the Medi-Cal program, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) used a Section 1115 Medicaid waiver called 'Medi-Cal 2020' and targeted high-risk enrollees with complex health concerns who often used emergency care services, including those with substance abuse issues, recently released prison inmates, people dealing with severe mental health issues, and homeless residents and those in danger of becoming homeless.

According to the UCLA report, the program accomplished three primary objectives. It:

• "Invested in promoting meaningful and diverse partner engagement and buy-in through consistent communication, consensus on strategic priorities, and/or financial incentives;
• Acquired and implemented innovative data sharing platforms needed to support cross-sector care coordination and facilitate data sharing with partners; and
• Were successful in developing appropriate infrastructure (e.g., staffing, standardized protocols) and processes (e.g., needs assessment, care plan, referrals) to support effective care coordination."

And while the program reduced ER visits and hospitalizations, it also saw an increase in the use of certain outpatient services, such as substance abuse treatment and specialty care, while also seeing a decrease in primary and mental health care services.

“The results show that such programs help complex patients in different ways, depending on their needs,” Pourat said in the press release. “Most importantly, our findings highlight the overall success of the Whole Person Care program and its potential for improving the lives of high-risk patients.”​

While the pilot program ended in 2021, state officials are working to expand its services throughout the state as part of a Medicaid overhaul called California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM).

School districts across the country are partnering with local health systems and telehealth companies to give students access to primary and chronic care services, along with much-needed behavioral and mental health services.

Healthcare has become a vital resource in schools, alongside the familiar staples of reading, writing, and arithmetic. But schools are moving beyond delivering care through a school nurse or staff member with rudimentary medical training. They're using telehealth and digital health tools to give students and staff on-demand access to healthcare providers, offering everything from primary care to chronic care management and behavioral health services.

Providing telehealth to a school or school district can be complex, often because of the costs involved. Schools don't have a lot of money to spend on healthcare, so they rely on grants, federal and state appropriations, or partnerships with local health systems or telehealth companies.

The benefits are numerous. Access to telehealth in the school can reduce both staff and student absenteeism, improve morale and even boost test scores, while also improving clinical outcomes. In many rural and underserved communities, a school's telehealth program may be the only care provider-for students whose families can't afford or travel to any other healthcare services.

In South Dakota, Avel eCare, a telehealth company spun off from Avera Health, is providing virtual care services to students living with Type 1 diabetes in roughly 100 schools in several states. The program was launched as a demonstration project by Avera Health, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and the Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Sheila Freed, RN, BSN, NCSN, Avel eCare's school health director and a nurse with some 20 years of experience, says many rural schools don't have a nurse on hand, don't have the money to hire one and wouldn't be able to find one even if they had the funding. 

"There's a huge gap there that someone has to fill," she says. "Some nurses are driving from school to school, maybe 60 to 100 miles a day, and they're spending more time behind a windshield than with a student."

Providing the technology for a virtual visit isn't that complicated. A small room is needed for privacy, and many programs use a PC or laptop to establish an audio-visual connection with a care provider. The Avel eCare program uses a telemedicine device developed by Tyto Care to capture vital signs and other biometrics during the virtual visit.

Freed says the Avel eCare program operates as a hub-and-spoke telemedicine network, with the care provider at one location offering services to a number of schools. The program will train someone at each school on how to use the technology.

"We set up the whole program so that teachers can relax," she says.

That idea extends beyond teachers. With a telehealth program in place, Freed says, providers can not only boost care management for students, but be a resource for school staff and even the student's family, helping everyone within the child's orbit to improve their understanding of diabetes and how to help someone living with the chronic condition.

"Type 1 diabetes doesn't end when the school day is over," she says.

And while the program was set up to focus on students living with diabetes, Freed says they'll treat a variety of health issues. One of the long-term goals of the demonstration project, she says, is to prove the feasibility of a telehealth program for addressing almost any health issue in rural and remote schools where access to care is limited.

Avera Health, the sprawling, 300+ site health system based in South Dakota, is supporting the project through its research branch. As of late last year, the program included schools in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, and even Maine, where Avel eCare providers had to learn about the brown-tail moth rash and tick-borne illnesses to treat students, with other states showing interest as well.

"Health systems should pay more attention to these programs," Freed says. "It's a wonderful match for value-based care. Sometimes there's a bit of a disconnect between school system and local health systems, and these programs can bridge that gap."

While some school districts are partnering with health systems for school-based telehealth programs, others turn to telehealth companies like Hazel Health, a San Francisco-based organization launched in 2015 and now working with thousands of schools across the country.

In Los Angeles, city and state organizations are using telehealth to address the dire need for access to behavioral health services in schools. According to the California Master Plan for Kids' Public Health, more than 284,000 school-aged children are dealing with major depression, and two-thirds aren't receiving treatment.

The Los Angeles County Office of Education, partnering with the LA Care Health Plan, Health Net, and the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health to make free telemental health services available to more than 1.3 million students in kindergarten through grade 12. With $24 million in funding from the health plans and the Department of Health Care Services' Student Behavioral Health Incentive Program, for the next two years, the partnership has contracted with Hazel Health, which expanded its platform to include telemental health services in 2021.

"We continue to see the devastating impact the pandemic has had on our children's mental well-being. This crisis has called us to collective action," Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo said in a Los Angeles Daily News story earlier this week. "As a mental health professional, I am keenly aware that partnerships and collaboration across sectors are necessary to meet our children's needs. We must remove barriers to access and continue our efforts to destigmatize help-seeking around mental health. We must also recognize that physical and mental health is crucial to teaching and learning."

Much of the need for behavioral and mental health services has been driven by the pandemic, which disrupted school-based programs and cut off students from familiar healthcare resources. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more than a third of high school students reported mental health issues in 2022, and according to a School Pulse Panel survey used by the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Studies, more than two-thirds of the nation's schools have increased access to mental health services to address that problem.

“I think people should always ask for help,” SaRiya Parker, an 8th-grade student at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, told the Los Angeles Daily News. “If you’re suffering in silence it’s like that drowning feeling when you get in the water and can’t get out. Coming to a school psychologist for help is a good way to get out of the water.”

The New Jersey health system is using the latest in smart technology, for both the patient and the care team, in its new Helena Theurer Pavilion.

Hackensack University Medical Center recently opened the Helena Theurer Pavilion, a nine-story surgical and intensive care tower that showcases the latest in healthcare innovation for both care providers and patients.

Mark Sparta, FACHE, president of Hackensack UMC and the northern region of the Hackensack Meridian Health network, says the 10-year project offers a good look not only at the hospital of the future but the hospital room of the future. Working with New York-based digital health company pCare, healthcare executives created a patient-friendly environment that focuses on collaborative health and on-demand access to resources and family.

"It was important for us, through that building, to be iconic in design," Sparta says. "But at the same time, what went on inside the building was really most important."

The building features 24 operating rooms, 72 post-anesthesia care unit beds, 50 ICU beds, and 175 medical-surgical beds. The operating rooms are equipped with the latest in robotic technology, as well as intraoperative MRI capabilities, large monitors, video-streaming capabilities, and dedicated CT imaging on the ICU floor.

Sparta said health system leaders worked with doctors and nurses to design ICU rooms to their specifications, right down to the placement of equipment and lighting. In addition, they worked with a patient experience committee, comprised of former patients and family members, to get the patient rooms right.

"Sometimes providers and patients and families look at different things from different angles of the prism," he says.

Mark Sparta, FACHE, president of Hackensack University Medical Center. Photo courtesy Hackensack UMC.

When the pandemic hit, and Hackensack UMC found itself in the bullseye, the project slowed down a bit. But Sparta says hospital executives learned a lot during the crisis, including how to isolate patients and create rooms with negative pressure to prevent the spread of the virus. Because only the framework of the new tower had been built so far, he says, they were able to make subtle changes in room design.

"Some of them may seem relatively trivial and almost like no-brainers," he says. "But until you have a pandemic they’re not as evident."

Sparta says it was important that Hackensack UMC also took advantage of the latest in smart room technology—for both patients and providers. That started with the lighting. The hospital used the latest in LED lighting, which he says was "so far advanced" when compared to legacy lighting systems used in the past.

Of the 24 operating rooms included in the new tower, six were designated specifically for da Vinci robotic surgeries, with six multi-port robotic surgical systems and one single-port system, and four robots specifically designed for joint replacement surgeries.

"That level of technology is really important, because when you can minimize tissue disturbance during surgery, recovery is much quicker, [and there is] much less pain," he says. "It's also much more precise [and there is] much less risk for infection."

"In addition to that, we have the ability to video-stream, within the ORs, the entire procedure," Sparta says. "That gives us the opportunity to have pathologists … come in virtually and explore the surgical field with the surgeon, which is really, really important from a diagnostic standpoint, as well as [for] other consultative specialties. We're able to leverage that technology … to teach folks not just from Hackensack University Medical Center and Academic Medical Center, but also from all around the world. Surgeons can stream in. That was very important to us."

The Patient Room of the Future

Turning to patient rooms, Sparta says each room is more spacious, with enough room for the patient and his/her family. Each room is also equipped for virtual visits not just with the care team, but family members, with a camera mounted on the TV and a special code that patients can give out to family members.

That's a lesson learned from the pandemic.

"So many patients—too many—had to say goodbye to their family members over an iPhone that was being held by one of their nurses through Facetime," Sparts says. "It was horrible for the family, horrible for the patients, horrible for the staff."

"Family support and family visitation is really critical to the recovery process," he adds. "We wanted to tackle that not just when a patient is in isolation, but …every day each and every patient [should have] the opportunity to visit with their family members whether they are 5 minutes away, around the corner and can't get away from their desk on their lunch time to come visit, or … whether they're 3,000 miles away on the other coast."

"It's a technology of convenience, but really a necessary technology to promote the healing process," he adds.

Another change is the messaging process. Sparta points out that typical hospital rooms have dry-erase boards on which the care team leaves important reminders and other messages. Each patient room in Hackensack UMC's new tower includes a tablet in its own compartment on the wall just outside the door, integrated with the EHR, which care team members consult before entering the room.

That dry-erase board is also incorporated into the 65-inch flat-screen TV in each room, Sparta says. Each TV has a split-screen capability, so that patients can access their information through the TV. They also have a tablet mounted to the overbed table that they can use to order food and control the TV, shades, temperature, and lighting and access additional resources.

"When we think of healthcare, we think about clinical technology," Sparta says. "What has surprised me is how much technology is available outside of healthcare that we were able to incorporate into the patient experience. It's fascinating."

"We took a lot of feedback from some of those patients and families that we invited in very early on," he adds. "[They asked] questions that we didn't necessarily ask ourselves. Could you do this? Could you integrate this? What if we did this? What if we did that? It's really, really important to be a great listener, and to be able to invite people in, even if you think you know about what the public expects and our community is interested in. It's really eye-opening when you bring them in and give them a forum to provide that type of feedback."

At the same time, Sparta says it's important to think of technology as a part of the healthcare ecosystem but not the only part, or even the most important part. He notes Hackensack UMC conducts all sorts of drills with its providers and staff in the event of a cybersecurity attack or loss of power.

"It's really important to start from the ground up and understand there's a manual process for doing things when and if the technology is not available to us," he says. "With that in mind, the question is how does all this technology, how does the hospital room of the future, bring back the human side to healthcare?"

Sparta says the biggest lesson he's learned from the process is to involve as many stakeholders as possible, from doctors and nurses to patients and families. They have opinions and ideas that go far beyond what technology can do, and those views will determine whether a certain tool, design, or care plan works or becomes ineffective and wasteful. Too many health systems adopt the latest technology without stopping to think about who will use it.

"You'll never take the humans out of healthcare, because this is a people business," he says.

The Healthcare Transformation Consortium and Wildflower Health are partnering on a value-based care program that will give health systems and OB-GYN offices access to digital health resources to improve care management for expectant and new mothers and their babies.

A consortium of New Jersey-based health systems is expanding its digital health platform to improve maternity care management and outcomes.

The Healthcare Transformation Consortium (HTC), which includes the Atlantic Health System, CentraState Healthcare System, Holy Name Medical Center, Hunterdon Healthcare, Valley Health System, Virtua, and Saint Peter's Healthcare System, is partnering with San Francisco-based digital health company Wildflower Health on the statewide program. The health systems, each of which have self-funded employee health plans, will adopt a maternity bundle developed by Wildflower Health that includes digital health tools and resources.

The partnership will also include OB-GYN practices across the state, including those affiliated with Lifeline Medical Associates and Axia Women's Health.

“This new partnership will allow the HTC to bring all stakeholders together to work for the benefit of expectant mothers, new moms and their babies,” Kevin Lenahan, Atlantic Health's executive vice president and chief business and strategy officer, said in a press release. “Additionally, our physicians, nurses and team members are the most important asset to any healthcare system. Working with Wildflower allows us the opportunity to improve both member and physician experience, while helping reduce the cost of care and improve the quality of care for our employee health plan.”

The program addresses a key pain point in American healthcare. The nation's maternal mortality rate in 2020 was 24 deaths per 100,000 live births, more than three times higher than most developed nations, and that rate was even higher for underserved populations such as women of color. New Jersey ranks 47^th in the nation with 46.5 deaths per 100,000 live births, and First Lady Tammy Murphy has launched an effort, called Nurture NJ, to cut that rate in half within five years.

The HTC-Wildflower Health partnership aims to bring digital health resources to bear, addressing key social determinants of health that contribute to these deaths, and create a value-based care program that rewards providers for outcomes.

The bundle includes prenatal and postnatal services and encompasses both the mother and baby. Among the services provided are access to health associates and coaches from Wildflower Health, educational content, virtual visits and remote patient monitoring tools.

"With this bundle, providers can evaluate and design value-based models alongside payers; install both digital health and point-of-care decision support tools; adapt current workflows to value-based requirements and continuously process data, both for leveraging key clinical metrics in real-time, as well as managing financial payments, reconciliations and outcomes measurement," the two groups said in the press release.

“As the demands on OB-GYNs continue to mount, it’s critical that we work together to find innovative ways to offer more support,” Gaurov Dayal, MD, chief executive officer at Axia Women’s Health, said in the press release. “The model being introduced in New Jersey fully equips clinicians to work more efficiently while providing personalized support for every patient, even between office visits. It makes it possible for providers to do their best work and be rewarded for high-quality outcomes.”

The Virginia Consortium to Advance Healthcare in Appalachia includes the UVA Center for Telehealth and several healthcare organizations, and will use $5.1 million in federal grant money to launch or expand a number of innovative programs to improve access to care in southwestern Virginia.

The University of Virginia Health System is joining forces with a coalition of Virginia healthcare organizations to offer a wide range of digital health and telehealth services to residents of rural Southwest Virginia that have been hard hit by the pandemic.

The Virginia Consortium to Advance Healthcare in Appalachia will include the UVA Center for Telehealth, one of 12 federally recognized telehealth resource centers; the Healthy Appalachia Institute at the University of Virginia's College of Wise; the Southwest Virginia Health Authority; Tri-Area Health, Ballad Health; and The Health Wagon, an innovative mobile health program serving Southwest Virginia. The consortium is supported by a $5.1 million grant from the US Department of Agriculture's Emergency Rural Health Grants program.

“There is an urgent need for community-academic partnerships such as this one to assess and respond to health inequities in Virginia’s Appalachian communities,” David Driscoll, PhD, MPH, director of the Healthy Appalachia Institute, said in a press release. “Our consortium is committed to understanding, and most importantly, responding to the determinants of population health disparities in Appalachia, including adequate access to comprehensive public health and medical services.” 

The effort will be led by Karen Rheuban, MD, director of the UVA Center for Telehealth and a national expert on telehealth, and include several innovative programs aimed at tackling health inequity and improving access to care for underserved communities. It will serve the city of Norton and 10 rural Virginia counties whose residents face a variety of chronic care issues, including a death rate 30% higher than other regions of the state, a 35% higher rate of death caused by COPD, a 21% higher rate of death caused by  heart disease and a 14% higher rate of death caused by diabetes.

“This consortium …is exactly the type of strategic initiative the Southwest Virginia Health Authority seeks,” Terry Kilgore, chair of the Southwest Virginia Health Authority, said in the press release. “Improving access to health care in southwest Virginia through broad-based consortiums will increase healthcare outcomes and improve the quality of life of the people of southwest Virginia. This project will create models that support rural healthcare, expand evidence-based models in telehealth to improve access to care, health outcomes and regional partnerships for resource sharing, equipment deployment, training, and education, as well as update our regional Blueprint for Health.”

Programs to be expanded or rolled out include a remote patient monitoring project piloted last year by the UVA Center for Telehealth; virtual urgent care, mental healthcare (through the Virginia Telemental Health Initiative) and chronic disease management services; an in-patient telemedicine platform designed to enable isolation care in hospitals and clinics; post-COVID-19 care services through telehealth; and a Project ECHO telemedicine platform developed by UVA Health to train rural and remote providers on COVID and post-COVID care.

With Emergency Department violence at record levels, administrators are turning to technology—and the EHR—to help clinicians identify and treat aggressive or stressed patients.

The Emergency Department is a hectic environment, requiring clinicians to be ready for almost anything. That shouldn't, however, include violence.

With roughly 85% of emergency physicians reporting in a recent survey that ED violence has increased over the past five years, health systems are taking action to protect both providers and patients. And while the most visible response is to increase security in the ED, some are using technology to take a more proactive approach.

At Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro, Massachusetts, administrators are tapping into the electronic health record platform to identify ED patients with a history of threatening behavior, which pushes out alerts to the care team. Those alerts not only give providers advance warning, but can help them call in behavioral healthcare specialists to help those patients.

"It's definitely led to a lot more awareness," says Brian Patel, MD, the hospital's senior vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer. "There are a lot of different reasons [that lead to stressful or violent situations in the ED.] If we can improve communication and get ahead of this, we are creating opportunities to improve both safety and care."

To get the most out of its EHR, Sturdy Memorial is working with digital health company PointClickCare. The two began working together in 2017 on ED utilization, and integrated security and care guidelines in 2021.

Once considered more of a hindrance than a help in improving clinical care, EHR platforms are slowly becoming more valuable in the hospital as vendors fine-tune the complex technology and providers learn how to use them. Among the bigger benefits just now being realized is the EHR's ability, under the right circumstances, to capture the entire patient history, collecting not only clinical information but data on social determinants of health, or outside factors that affect healthcare access and outcomes.

That includes behavioral or societal clues that could indicate a combative patient, such as past run-ins with the law, treatment for stress or aggressive behavior, or other clues that could indicate the patient is confused or agitated. An ED doctor or nurse seeing those clues in the EHR could then not only alert the hospital's security personnel, but call in specially trained care providers or social workers to work with the patient.

"There's so much information out there that could be useful," Patel says, "but in the past a lot of it was fragmented." In many cases, ED care teams were forced to piece together past reports or self-reported data, then an educated guess as to whether to take precautions.

Aside from reducing violence in the ED, the platform also improves care coordination and management by bringing in behavioral health resources more quickly to treat a patient. This ensures that a patient is connected more quickly to the right care providers and isn't forced to wait for a long time in the ED—an additional source of stress and agitation.

"The impact of the ED case manager program and our work with PointClickCare for patients with behavioral health challenges has been substantial, even during the pandemic, when behavioral health needs have increased, and staff resources have been stretched thin," Patel said in a separate e-mail to HealthLeaders. "Today, unnecessary ED utilization by individuals with mental health challenges managed through this program remains 44% lower than the six-month period prior to entering the program. And, because of the social determinants of health component of patient assessment, individuals not only receive better care, but also connections with resources that help meet their whole health needs, from healthy food to transportation to appointments or safe shelter."

There are, of course, challenges to using the technology. Patel says the platform was initially intended to reduce bias by giving providers as much objective information as possible so that they didn't have to make a decision solely based on how a patient looks or acts. But technology can introduce bias as well, and providers are cautioned to not jump to conclusions.

"This has to be treated very carefully," he says. "We have to avoid labeling patients. And that comes with learning how to use the technology correctly. We're all getting much more [comfortable] with the technology, but we have to avoid asking too much of it. The system is only as good as what we put into it."

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued guidance changing Medicaid and CHIP coverage for eConsults, or provider-to-provider specialty consults conducted via digital health or telehealth. The  ruling could expand the service, which helps primary care providers keep more of their patients and boosts access to care for underserved patients.

Federal officials have expanded coverage for specialty consults between care providers via digital health for Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) members.

In guidance issued earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that interprofessional consultations, or instances when a care provider seeks the advice of a specialist for a patient's treatment, via eConsults can be covered by state Medicaid or CHIP programs even when the patient is not present, as long as the consult is focused on that patient.

eConsults are clinical consults usually conducted via telemedicine (including the telephone) or digital health. They enable primary care providers to expand care management options for their own patients without having to send those patients off to a specialist. And they improve access to care for patients who might not want to travel to see a specialist due to a variety of reasons, including distance and cost.

Alongside helping primary care providers retain more of their patients, the platform is popular with federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and community health centers who treat underserved populations and in rural areas where access to specialists is scarce. It also helps specialists expand their reach and treat more patients in need of their services.

"Timely access to specialty providers can improve the quality of care and treatment outcomes for both physical and behavioral health," CMS wrote in its guidance. "While access to specialty care has been a challenge across a range of specialties, access to specialty care for mental health and substance use disorders has been a particular challenge."

The ruling changes the payment model so that the consulting provider, or the specialist, can bill for the treatment. Previously, CMS allowed the treating provider to bill Medicaid, which in many case forced the program to pay higher rates to the treating provider so that he/she could reimburse the specialist for consulting services.

To qualify eConsult coverage, both care providers must be enrolled in the Medicaid program in the state where the patient is located, though the consultant can be located in another state.

"Given the potential for improving access to specialty care, a number of states have obtained authority through state legislation for or expressed interest in covering eConsults," the Los Angeles-based Manatt, Phelps & Phelps law firm wrote in a recent blog. "States that choose to cover eConsult codes must submit a state plan amendment to CMS to add a payment methodology for the qualifying service, and should consider broadly communicating any related policy changes to their enrolled provider community."

The Chicago health system and CVS Health are partnering on an ACO that will be part of CMS' REACH direct contracting model, aimed at improving healthcare access for Chicago-area residents on Medicaid.

While some see retail healthcare services as competitors to traditional healthcare organizations, Chicago's Rush University System for Health (RUSH) is launching a partnership with CVS Health aimed at improving health equity for Medicaid patients.

RUSH, which comprises RUSH University, three hospitals, and a network of outpatient care sites, is joining a newly created accountable care organization (ACO) developed by CVS Health. The collaboration is based on the redesigned  ACO Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health (REACH) direct contracting model developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI).

Through the program, RUSH and CVS Health aim to create a care management network for Chicago-area residents on Medicaid. It will enable members seeking care at MinuteClinic locations in Chicago and Evanston to access additional services, including specialty care, through RUSH.

“This provides another option for patients at a time when access to high-quality health care is more important than ever," RUSH President and CEO Omar Lateef said in a press release. "It will help strengthen care coordination for patients, while enabling them to receive services convenient to where they live and work.”

“As part of CVS Health’s care delivery strategy, we are engaging our assets on behalf of this ACO REACH population to help drive high-quality outcomes, promote health equity, and bring healthcare costs down,” added Mohamed Diab, CEO of the CVS ACO. “Our strategic alignment with RUSH has the potential to help improve longitudinal care for their Medicare population of 35,000 beneficiaries.”

The partnership offers not only an interesting example of collaboration in the competitive primary care space, but highlights the efforts of the healthcare industry to tackle barriers to access for underserved populations, including social determinants of health. The program will include access to virtual and home-based care, transportation support for annual wellness visits, cost-sharing options on co-pays, and other incentives and services.

“RUSH has a long-held commitment to improving the health of the communities we serve,” Lateef said in the press release. “This agreement reflects that strong commitment and a terrific opportunity to build upon that foundation of strong community-based programs and partnerships and have impact for patients on day one."