Aledade and Humana have joined forces to expand access to value-based care for the insurer’s Medicare Advantage members in North Carolina.
Aledade, a startup company that helps primary care accountable care organizations (ACOs), already partners with insurance giant Humana to provide care to its Medicare Advantage members in Louisiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
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The new agreement expands that collaboration in North Carolina. Under a new contract, now in effect, physicians in Aledade’s ACOs in North Carolina who participate in Humana’s Medicare Advantage network can use tools and resources from both organizations to help deliver coordinated, quality care.
Aledade, based in Bethesda, Maryland, partners with independent primary care practices, providing tools to build and lead ACOs that participate in a variety of value-based care arrangements.
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The announcement marks even more growth for Aledade in North Carolina, where it already cares for nearly 150,000 patients through Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs and has contracts with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.
The agreement expands the availability of value-based care for Humana Medicare Advantage members in North Carolina and builds on the value-based contract announced last year between Humana and Aledade in those other three states.
“Humana shares our strong commitment to helping independent practices thrive in value-based care arrangements that reward them for improving the quality of care and patient health outcomes,” Patrick Mobley, executive director of Aledade’s North Carolina ACOs, said in the announcement. “Together, we are empowering North Carolina physicians with support to offer a more personalized, coordinated primary care experience for the patient.”
Aledade partners with ACOs that focus on delivering preventive care, reducing unnecessary or repetitive care and better coordinating patient care. The company supports physicians with a comprehensive range of capabilities that include data analytics, care management and patient outreach tools, regulatory expertise and local, hands-on support.
“Humana is pleased to increase access to coordinated care for our North Carolina Medicare Advantage members through this expanded collaboration with Aledade,” said Neil Steffens, Humana's regional president for Medicare in North Carolina. “We’re excited to support these physician practices through shared knowledge and expertise, and strengthen our ability to improve health outcomes and the patient experience.”
Humana has made value-based care a central focus, an approach that emphasizes reimbursement to physicians linked to the health outcomes of their patients rather than based solely on the quantity of services they provide under a fee-for-service approach.
The insurer has a growing value-based care presence. As of Dec. 31, Humana had more than 2.4 million individual Medicare Advantage members and approximately 115,000 commercial members who are cared for by approximately 62,000 primary care physicians in more than 1,000 value-based relationships across 43 states and Puerto Rico, the company said.