Memora Health and Luma Health partner to solve access and engagement in healthcare

This is Memora's seventh partnership in the last seven months

Two of the biggest problems in healthcare right now are access and engagement: there are 3.6 million people who can't get care simply because of transportation issues, and even when someone does get to see a doctor, it's difficult to get them to adhere to their care plan. Poor adherence results in 125,000 avoidable deaths and $100 billion annually in preventable health care costs.

Memora Health, a care program for virtual care delivery and complex care management, and Luma Health, a patient engagement platform, announced a partnership on Thursday, combining their two solutions to tackle these problems.

The partnership will combine Memora's care programs with Luma’s Patient Success Platform to help health systems increase patient access and ensure that patients are engaged and following their care plans to avoid care gaps. 

"We partnered with Luma because we both believe that healthcare should work better for all patients and care teams. Our digital health technologies support patients and providers throughout the entire care continuum and create a streamlined experience for patients across the many entry points of health systems," Naomi Levinthal, the company's VP of Strategy, told VatorNews.

"Luma’s platform specializes in enabling healthcare organizations to unify operational, clinical, and financial journeys, while our program uses AI to deliver dynamic and conversational two-way text to reduce care team burden and improve patient outcomes."

Founded in 2015, Luma is an engagement platform for patients to help them better connect with their doctor both before and after an appointment. The company works with specialty practices, which can be both large and small, as well as health systems, primary care providers, ACOs and FQHCs, while users can range from CEOs to call center employees.

Some of Luma's features include smart scheduling, so that patients can self-schedule 24/7 or confirm, reschedule, or join a wait list from a text message. It also provides referral management, meaning that it will automatically prompt referred patients to self-schedule. Patients also receive confirmation via their communication method of choice, and referred providers can track their status. 

Additionally, Luma provides patients with appointment reminders to reduce no-show rates and mobile patient intake, where the securely data for the patient that they will need ahead of each appointment and logs it into the EHR. Finally, it allows patients to chat with their doctor, as well as share lab results, stay up to date with medications, or follow-up after the patient is discharged.

The company currently serves more than 600 health systems, integrated delivery networks, federally qualified health centers, specialty networks, and clinics across the United States, and orchestrates the care journeys of more than 35 million patients.

Memora, which was founded in 2017, tackles two problems simultaneously: the first is that all care teams know we are still years away from conveniently and meaningfully engaging patients, and the second is that these care teams are burned out, understaffed, and suffering, Levinthal explained. 

"We address both of these problems in the market because we are rewiring that system with modern technology. Our solution allows clinicians to interact more efficiently with their patients, and patients can access healthcare information as easily as they can text their families and friends," she said.

Memora Health partners with clinicians to deploy care programs that are responsive to specific patient population needs, making adoption and sustainability much easier. Its customers use its clinical programs to anticipate what symptoms and complications patients may experience and provide them with real-time guidance on how to manage them. The program also reduces visits to the emergency room because patients can anticipate what they will experience. 

One typical use case is Memora's postpartum care program, which delivers breastfeeding and/or formula feeding content and follow-up depression screenings for mothers at higher risk. It also incorporates personalization into the messaging, such as calling the baby by name. Memora's customers have used its program beyond postpartum care, including in pediatrics, gastroenterology, radiation oncology, fertility, medical oncology, cardiology, orthopedics, and remote patient monitoring. 

A few of Memora's health system customers include Penn Medicine, Edward-Elmhurst Health, and Dell Children’s Medical Center and its programs have been shown to reduce care team notifications by nearly 40%. The company is also growing quickly, having seen nearly 5X employee growth and contracted annual recurring revenue growth of 3X over the last year. 

The partnership between Memora Health and Luma Health will enable care teams to keep patients engaged and successful between visits and unburden them from routine administrative tasks. This kind of focus will afford care teams the opportunity to prioritize their time on patients that need it most.

After implementing Memora’s care programs and Luma’s platform separately, health systems have reported a 62 percent increase in patients' care plan adherence and a 37 percent increase in referred patients seen. The companies now expect the same, if not higher, levels of ROI for health systems that implement the solutions together.

"Our goal is to offer a streamlined digital front door and care delivery experience where patients easily interact with the health system from an onboarding perspective, and gaps in care are avoided through an always-on care companion that reduces the work-outside-of-work demands on care teams," said Levinthal.

"Success will be measured by new patient visits, increased patient engagement and care plan adherence, and care team satisfaction and administrative efficiency savings." 

This partnership with Luma is Memora's seventh partnership announced in the past seven months: others include UP Medical, a multi-specialty medical group dedicated to raising standards and experience for chronically ill patients; Edward-Elmhurst Health, an integrated Illinois health system; Impilo, a remote digital health device platform; and Xealth, a provider of digital health strategies.