Bon Secours Mercy Health, Strive Partner on Kidney Care
A feature story in the May/June issue of Healthcare Innovation focused on the rise of value-based care models, payer-provider partnerships, and venture-backed startups in kidney disease. One of the companies featured, Denver-based Strive Health, has just announced a partnership with Ohio-based Bon Secours Mercy Health.
Bon Secours is partnering with Strive to offer specialized population health capabilities to nearly 8,000 chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patients across Ohio.
This relationship will deliver a new clinical model for kidney patients that leverages Strive’s proprietary technology platform and interdisciplinary clinical care teams. Strive said that its CareMultiplier technology gathers data from hundreds of sources to gain a holistic view of the patient’s experience. That information can help paint a picture about the risk of hospitalization or progression of disease, enabling providers to better manage care based on each individual’s needs.
“With Strive, we have found an organization that enables us to enhance our ability to deliver whole-person care to our patients with kidney disease anywhere anytime. Together, we bring a proven innovative clinical model to our communities that integrates with our current model of care,” said Jean Haynes, chief population and community health officer for Bon Secours Mercy Health, in a statement.
Bon Secours’ network of more than 1,000 care sites includes 50 hospitals, as well as home health agencies, hospice, skilled nursing and assisted living facilities.
In a recent interview with Healthcare Innovation, Will Stokes, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Strive Health, pointed to a recent policy change as significant: CMS is now allowing ESRD patients to enroll in Medicare Advantage plans for the first time. “That has forced Medicare Advantage plans to look for solutions for managing this population that has always been a very high-cost, complicated population, so that was a big catalyst,” he said.
The venture-backed Strive’s model combines technology with patient care, with the aim of slowing kidney disease progression, preventing unnecessary and costly hospitalizations, and expanding access to home dialysis and transplants. As an example of the work Strive is doing, Stokes described its partnership with Regence in the Pacific Northwest. “They are looking for our clinical solution to help them across several lines of business. We take total-cost-of-care risk on patients in their population who have chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease, and we get paid when we bring costs down for that population.”
One overall health system goal is to identify kidney disease earlier and intervene. That means getting primary care more involved. “When you think about CKD, it's an important opportunity to bridge the gap between primary care and nephrology,” Stokes said. “A lot of the patients who have CKD and aren't getting actively treated may have a relationship with a primary care provider. There's a big opportunity to educate those primary care physicians more directly, run analytics, and make them aware that a portion of their patients have CKD that's not being treated yet. For patients at CKD stage 3b or beyond, we can facilitate that interaction between PCP and nephrologists. Then we need nephrologists to be well incentivized and engaged in caring for those CKD patients who get referred.”
