Banner Health has signed on with Hue Health and Flume Health to launch a new health plan built around direct primary care.
39North is named after the latitude of the region it will serve in northern Colorado, the companies announced. The self-funded, advanced primary care plan was created and run by Hue in conjunction with Banner and is "powered" by Flume's platform, which aims to make designing and managing healthcare services less complex.
The plan will be available to all employers in northern Colorado and, in addition to Hue's primary care services, will allow members to access Banner's services in-network.
"There's a huge appetite for this in the provider community, and simultaneously we were seeing a ton more interest in the plan community," Jake Kerr, CEO of Hue Health, told Fierce Healthcare.
Banner will serve as an "anchor" for the plan, providing its medical services including specialty care, while Hue will manage cost savings and price transparency by overseeing direct contracts with hospitals and other providers for medical care. Banner's primary care physicians will be able to focus on offering coordinated, accessible care within its system.
Available primary care services will include acute care, preventive screenings, annual wellness visits and immunizations. Patients with chronic illness will be eligible for care management services that include clinical pharmacists, diabetes educators and other experts to monitor their conditions.
Cedric Kovacs-Johnson, CEO of Flume Health, told Fierce Healthcare that there have been multiple pockets of innovation like 39North in the insurance industry, but demand is there for a new approach to coverage.
39North in particular, he said, taps into the potential of primary care as the center of a plan design.
"What 39North figured out is how powerful that PCP relationship is," Kovacs-Johnson said. "I think that's the key here: primary care unlocked."