Aetna is teaming with Landmark Health to expand in-home medical care available to its Medicare Advantage members across several New York markets.
The program will identify members living in New York City, Long Island, Albany, Rochester and Buffalo with chronic conditions and offer them access to Landmark's slate of physician-led home services, including health screenings, home safety checks, lab draws, wound care, catheter maintenance and medication adherence reviews.
In addition, members will have round-the-clock access to a dedicated Landmark provider. Landmark's team will coordinate directly with the member's primary care physician as well.
“This new approach identifies members with multiple chronic conditions and provides stronger in-home physician support in addition to their current primary care physician relationship,” said Lauren Casalveri, Aetna vice president and chief Medicare officer in New York, in a statement. “This collaboration allows members to remain safely in their homes and provides optimal treatment for their conditions.”
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Nick Loporcaro, CEO of Landmark Health, told Fierce Healthcare that the partnership was a logical next step in the company's growth plans, due to Aetna's national reach and the fact that Landmark already has a strong presence working with other payers in New York.
Landmark launched in 2014 and since then has grown to 48 cities across 15 states and 114,000 members.
While the industry was embracing home health solutions before the pandemic, Loporcaro said that COVID-19 has put an even bigger spotlight on the value in care at home.
"COVID has really shown a spotlight on what it is we do and why we do this," he said. "Once they realize the quality of this care…we see a real bright future in being able to offer this to a much larger number of individuals."
That includes the broad expansion of telehealth use, he said. As Landmark's patient population is largely in MA — a typical female patient, for example, is 79 years old with eight chronic conditions — getting them into telehealth was a challenge that required adapting the approach to best fit each member.
Some could do video visits, while for others visits were only telephonic, Loporcaro said. Though telehealth ramped up early in the pandemic, he said the company is back to about 90% in-person visits.