Success in value-based care requires significant technology and program investments. Unfortunately, many federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) — safety-net providers approved by the government to provide low-cost care — simply lack the scale and capacity to prosper in these care models.
Yuvo Health was founded last year to solve that problem. The startup is getting a chance to further its goals should an initiative announced on Wednesday succeed. The New York City-based company is partnering with the Primary Care Development Corporation (PCDC) — a community development financial institution and nonprofit focused on advancing health equity — to co-develop training programs and support resources to ensure FQHCs are positioned for success in value-based care programs.
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Under the partnership, Yuvo will provide these medical centers with administrative and managed care contracting services, and PCDC will work to ensure optimal provider engagement, said Yuvo CEO and co-founder Cesar Herrera.
Yuvo’s administrative services solution is designed to alleviate burden from FQHC teams so they can be more efficient and patient-focused. The startup handles back-end functions like data aggregation and analytics, data analysis and reporting, risk adjustment, coding and care coordination. Yuvo also provides a managed contracting engine that helps these accredited health centers access contracts aligned with their needs.
“Our partnership with Yuvo Health enables us to access their built scale and infrastructure to qualify for value-based care opportunities that would have otherwise been unavailable to us on our own,” said James Powell, CEO of Long Island Select Healthcare, one of Yuvo’s FQHC partners. “We’re leveraging their population health and broader managed services team every day — whether through specific quality initiatives, more efficient coding and documentation or streamlined data-systems integrations.”
Long Island Select Healthcare entered into its partnership with Yuvo to evolve its center into the value-based care world while maximizing its revenue opportunities to better support its patients, according to Powell. To measure the success of this partnership, the center will track shared savings payments for increasing quality, determine how much the total cost of care for patients has decreased and assess how much patient capacity has increased, he said .
Yuvo Health’s mission is to support FQHCs like Long Island Select Healthcare build their capacity so they can better help the community, according to Herrera. Powell supports this mission and believes that it is an important one when it comes to alleviating health disparities in the U.S.
“FQHCs directly serve underserved and historically marginalized communities,” he said. “By providing access to additional sustainable revenue, Yuvo Health directly enables us to increase our services to more patients in our community, further closing the healthcare gap.”
In many communities, FQHCs are the sole access point for primary care for Medicaid-covered or uninsured people. Without these healthcare services, low-income individuals would be relegated to two options, either forgoing care altogether or waiting until their issue is severe enough to bring them to a hospital ER, Powell pointed out.
“Neither option is beneficial to the individual, the community or society as a whole,” he said.
In addition to Long Island Select Healthcare, there are three other FQHCs that Yuvo has begun delivering its services to in downstate New York. Yuvo anticipates expanding its services across New York, the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic region in the coming years.
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