ChristianaCare and Highmark Health are joining forces to curb rising healthcare costs while advancing value-based care.
The provider and payer are establishing a new joint venture company that will leverage data and technology with the aim of improving outcomes and making healthcare more affordable. The for-profit venture will be governed by both entities. Per the agreement, ChristianaCare and Highmark will collaborate via the company for the next 10 years.
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The joint venture, which is yet to be named, will focus on providing continuous care for patients.
“When someone has a chronic health condition, for example, high blood pressure, they have it every day, not once every three months when they visit their doctor,” said Dr. Janice E. Nevin, president and CEO of Newark, Delaware-based ChristianaCare, during a press call Wednesday.
Combining their data and expertise, ChristianaCare and Pittsburgh-based Highmark will develop solutions and new models of care. These will help the organizations identify patient needs and support different types of care delivery, including through wearables, video calls and in-person visits, she said. The new care models developed by the company will also take into account social determinants of health.
“Putting together a joint venture will allow us to share information differently than we could if we were just doing this in a much less formal way,” said Deborah Rice-Johnson, president of Highmark Inc. and chief growth officer of Highmark Health, during the press call.
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The company will have two main components. The first is a center that will create data-and technology-driven solutions, and the second is ChristianaCare’s Center for Virtual Health, which develops and deploys virtual capabilities for primary and specialty care.
Further, the joint venture will explore value-based care payment models to financially support the solutions and interventions developed through the collaboration, Rice-Johnson said.
Though initially, only ChristianaCare patients and Highmark Health members will have access to the company’s offerings, the organizations plan to make them available to other payers and providers in the future.
“This work that we are doing, we fully believe, is transportable,” Rice-Johnson said. “Not just to Pittsburgh or to other markets we are in, but nationally.”
The joint venture does not represent a merger or an exclusivity agreement between ChristianaCare and Highmark Health. Both organizations will continue to operate independently.
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