House call providers are emerging as perhaps the biggest disruptors in the healthcare continuum. Mobile health service provider DocGo reinforced that point Monday when it announced a partnership with a Southern California Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly. Under the deal, DocGo will provide non-emergency in-home medical visits to seniors participating in San Diego-based Gary and Mary West PACE program.
“Our partnership with DocGo will enable us to reach even more participants who may have difficulty getting to their medical appointments or our facilities in San Marcos,” Ross Colt, M.D., Gary and Mary West PACE Medical Director said in a statement.
Holistic approaches
For DocGo, the alliance not only helps it expand further into the California market, it also helps support the value of a more holistic, or longitudinal, approach to care.
“Not only have the health systems experienced significant cost savings and reductions in non-emergency visits, but the patient experience and feedback has been overwhelming,” Caroline Hodge, DocGo vice president of clinical operations, said in a press release.
Grandview Research values the U.S. house call market at approximately $460 million and is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 5.5% over the next five years. That growth is driven by an aging population and efforts by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other payers to incentivize home care to contain rising healthcare costs.
In-home medical providers, including DocGo, VillageMD, DispatchHealth and Heal are playing a pivotal role in that mission by lining up various partnerships and alliances. Last year, Walgreens invested $5.2 billion in VillageMD. DispatchHealth has aligned with Humana, along with several healthcare systems and more recently the American College of Cardiology to bring cardiac care into the home.
A ‘360-degree view’
Partnerships are also at the center of in-home primary care provider Heal’s strategy. Heal CEO Scott Vertrees told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse in a recent Newsmakers Podcast that his company operates under a value-based care model that has a “360-degree view of patients,” according to Vertrees. Heal has developed a healthcare ecosystem that includes partnerships with home health agencies, meal services and potentially urgent care providers.
Although that approach would appear to be more expensive to payers, Vertrees said it isn’t in the long run.
“The way you save isn’t to provide less care, it’s actually the opposite, ” Vertrees explained. “You have to get in front of these conditions, spend more on preventative care and avoid hospital admissions and emergency room visits and the chronic care developments that are so prevalent in the industry.”
Vertrees said companies like Heal are providing patients a single access point to care, while keeping them healthier for longer in the comfort of their homes.
