Signify Health launches new partnership program to expand its value-based care ecosystem

Initial partners include Quartet Health, Medalogix, ReferWell, Center Health, and PatientBond

Among the most important developments in healthcare in recent years have been the shift toward value-based care, which is when caregivers are paid on the basis of quality versus per service, as well as the incorporation of the social determinants of health. That involves taking all of the factors in a person's life, including their food availability, access to transportation, and their mental state, and factoring that into their overall care and well being.

Signify Health has built its model around those changes; its platform uses analytics to change the way healthcare is paid for and to bring healthcare to where people already are: in their home.

The company's efforts include increasing access and utilization of in-home health evaluations (IHEs) for Medicare Advantage members, in order to provide a more comprehensive assessment than the annual wellness visit. That allows its network of over 10,000 clinicians to better understand all of the elements of a patient’s life.

Of course, the social determinants of health are vast and, even with those IHE's, one company can't do this entirely by itself. That's why this week Signify announced the launch of its new Partner Program, which will allow the company to create an ecosystem to connect value-based solutions with all of the players in healthcare, including hospitals, health systems, payers, and patients.

"Signify Health was built around convening people, including providers, health plans, employers, community organizations, and individuals, to illuminate health risks and to optimize health outcomes. With this, we have a unique vantage point for considering the massive opportunity before us to change the system," Victoria Bartolome, SVP of Strategic Initiatives at Signify Health, told VatorNews. 

The new Partnership Program was founded because Signify realized it needed to build up the infrastructure that it sits on top of; its new partners will both complement and expand its offerings and services in areas that include behavioral health, remote patient monitoring, social determinants of health, patient engagement, and care optimization, she explained.

"Achieving that level of transformational change cannot be accomplished by one company. With this in mind, the Partnership Program convenes payers, providers, and tech companies to deliver on the promise of value-based care."

Seven inaugural partners

The company is launching this new initiative with seven inaugural partners, each of which was chosen based on its potential ability to drive health outcomes in one or more ways, including activating the home as a key site for care and recovery; equipping value-based providers with insights, tools, and support to succeed; and supporting a whole-person approach to care that integrates clinical, social, and behavioral factors.

Among those initial partners are: 

• Medalogix, a data science company focused solely on the home health market. Signify and Medalogix will partner on developing a care coordination tool to identify patients with rising risk for rehospitalization or hospice.

"The companies are working to develop a complete longitudinal patient record, leveraging advanced data science and risk modeling to provide greater transparency into care and quality gaps," Bartolome explained. 

The two companies have aligned strategies, said Elliott Wood, President and CEO of Medalogix.

"Medalogix’ collaboration with Signify provides an expanded opportunity for our customers to support organizations in value-based contracting. Home health and hospice agencies play a vital role in the continuum, providing care in the most efficient and desired location, the home. We believe partnering with Signify Health, whose mission is 'more healthy, happy, days at home,' is aligned with our own mission, to transform healthcare by empowering individualized patient care with innovative, data science and machine learning solutions," he said.

• Quartet Health, a company that makes it patients to get mental healthcare by matching with professionals based on their own preferences and needs.

The partnership between Signify and Quartet will involve assisting health plans in addressing the behavioral health and substance misuse challenges of their members. Signify can use its IHEs to identify members who need assistance with behavioral health and substance misuse challenges and then connect them with Quartet as the health plan’s mental health platform.

"With the thousands of in-home assessments Signify will conduct throughout the year in our first market together, we expect to engage many patients into care throughout the year. Together, by starting in the home and meeting patients where they are, Quartet and Signify can better identify, triage, and engage patients in an integrated care model that ultimately helps ensure holistic care and management of mental, social, and physical health," Puneet Singh, CEO of Quartet Health and Kyle Armbrester, CEO of Signify Health, wrote in a joint blog post. 

• ReferWell, a company that connects providers into Virtually Integrated Networks that optimize transitions of care.

Signify is partnering with ReferWell to improve the primary care visit scheduling experience for Medicare Advantage members. Signify’s care coordinators will be able to leverage ReferWell’s platform to search for, and schedule, PCP appointments in real-time for members who want help following the completion of an in-home health evaluation.

"The partnership aims to deliver value for Medicare Advantage plans by improving the conversion rate of PCP scheduling and building efficiencies into the care coordinator workflow to more effectively return members to care," said Bartolome. 

"We’re delighted to partner with Signify to help them extend their value proposition for their health plan clients by leveraging the referable moments they have when providing in home evaluations. They’re a great organization and are a joy to work with, so we’re looking forward to building great success stories together and expanding our reach into more health plans and their provider networks," Vytas Kisielius, CEO of Referwell, told VatorNews.

• Center Health, a company which allows patients to check their blood sugar straight from their phone.

"We're excited to partner with Signify Health and help more patients access Center's AI-based diabetes coaching technology," said Ali Imain, CEO of Center Health.

"Signify's focus on SDoH and value based care makes them an excellent partner for Center. We hold a commonly shared belief that healthcare needs to address the whole person, and Center's technology is built to do precisely that. Paired with Signify's leading episodes of care programs, we're excited to help more patients achieve more happy and healthy days."

• PatientBond, a digital patient engagement platform that leverages consumer science and psychographics to motivate and activate patient behaviors

"Signify Health is the leading provider of ‘Bringing Health Homeward.’ We are excited to help them with their vision and further our mission to improve outcomes and the patient experience by using our proven healthcare specific psychographic consumer segmentation model and multi-channel communication platform," said Mike Schiller, EVP of Sales at PatientBond. 

"We are helping Signify Health meet their patients on the patients’ terms - where they are, when the want to engage and how they want to communicate."

Impacting health outcomes 

These initial partners were selected based on needs and requests from Signify’s clients, Bartolome told me, noting that they "represent forward-thinking health technology and services that support the closure of critical health gaps, advance value-based healthcare, and activate the home as a site of care."

These companies "illustrate the types of partnerships Signify is looking to establish through the program moving forward," she said, and while Signify doesn't have a specific target in mind as to how many companies it wants to have in the program, it will continue to evaluate additional company partners who are aligned with its mission and vision going forward.

Ultimately, though, the success of the program is going to be measured in Signify's ability to impact health outcomes at scale. 

"Broadly, we are measuring our ability to deploy these partners across our client base to improve outcomes within care episodes and better connect health plan members with the resources they need. Signify’s overall business model is already aligned to these outcomes, so our partnerships should improve our business results as well," Bartolome told me.

"The Signify Health Partnership Program is an effort to expand upon the services, referrals, and resources available to patients through IHEs. The goal is to make preventive care happen holistically, year-round— meeting members where they are and providing more preventive services in the home. This partnership does exactly that."