CareLinx, an online home caregiver network, has acquired the Optimal Aging program from Providence St. Joseph Health System, which brings together non-clinical partner services, such as home care, personal care, transportation and meal support.
Renton, Wash.-based Providence St. Joseph has been very active on the technology front in early 2019. Just a week after creating a for-profit population health management company Ayin Health Solutions, on Feb. 12 the nonprofit health system continued its push into the health IT market with the acquisition of Lumedic, a revenue cycle management platform based on blockchain technology.
With a nationwide network of over 300,000 caregivers, Burlingame, Calif.-based CareLinx says it has re-engineered in-home care with a focus on technology. Caregivers leverage a digital platform and mobile technology to assist people with activities of daily living and address social determinant factors of health for high-risk members.
Developed by Providence St. Joseph’s Digital Innovation Group, Optimal Aging brings together non-clinical partner services, such as home care, personal care, transportation and meal support to help older adults age safely in their homes. The program began operations in the Seattle area in February 2016, and has since expanded to the Oregon tri-county region as of April 2017. To date, the program has connected and supported more than 6,700 older adults. CareLinx has been the key technology and service partner of Optimal Aging since the program launch in 2016.
CareLinx said the acquisition would allow it to leverage Optimal Aging’s intellectual property to enhance their partnerships with large payers and providers that share the aim of lowering readmission rates through established care management and transition programs.
Optimal Aging recently completed a pilot program as Providence St. Joseph Health’s post-discharge readmission reduction partner, in an effort to better address the social determinants of health as well as provide actionable insights for the care management team. That pilot program consisted of following 100 Providence St. Joseph Health Medicare Advantage members with similar admission diagnoses (such as sepsis, COPD and heart failure) over the course of a seven-month period in 2018. During that time, the pilot group received in-home visits from CareLinx caregivers as well as check-in phone calls, and the program has reported positive preliminary findings. Although the size of the pilot did not allow for statistical significance, there was a trend of decreased hospital readmissions in this group over a 30-day episode post-discharge. Only 16 percent of participants were readmitted, as compared to a typical re-admittance for a similar period in 2017 of 23 percent. This equates to a readmission drop of 43 percent.
“We developed Optimal Aging initially because we saw that aging adults were no longer able to live in their homes safely by themselves, and when we delved into the problem we found a significant opportunity to help our patients with personal and domestics needs that impacted their well-being but weren’t clinical in nature,” said Aaron Martin, executive vice president and chief digital officer for Providence St. Joseph Health, in a prepared statement. “We believe the Optimal Aging model for helping adults age in place can be successfully scaled to reach more people and that CareLinx has the reach and depth of expertise for where the program needs to grow.”
