Dive Brief:
- Advocate Aurora Health is teaming up with Oak Street Health to open a primary care center for Medicare beneficiaries in the Chicago suburb of Elgin.
- The center will offer a range of both primary care and wraparound services aimed at keeping seniors healthy. The Elgin area serves more than 25,000 Medicare-eligible adults.
- The partnership is Advocate Aurora's first with a company focused exclusively on Medicare patients and Oak Street's first with an integrated health system.
Dive Insight:
With the ongoing shift to value-based care, health systems are looking for new ways to attract consumers amid shrinking inpatient volume and lower reimbursements. Add to that an aging population, and systems are increasingly eyeing opportunities that target the elderly and their unique needs.
Earlier this month, for example, Beaumont Health announced a joint venture with Alternative Solutions Health Network to increase access to home health and hospice services in Michigan.
Oak Street Health operates 40 primary care centers in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and is seen as part of a crop of startups rising up to serve the silver tsunami. At HLTH 2018, former CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt name-checked it among of a handful of "inspiring" mission-driven healthcare companies to watch.
The company's community-based centers offer a package of services including primary care, flexible scheduling, rides to appointments, insurance education, health and wellness events and care coordination.
Advocate Aurora — the result of last year's merger of Advocate Health Care and Aurora Health Care — operates a network of 27 hospitals and 500-plus ambulatory sites in Illinois and Wisconsin.
"Our aligned approach to population health and shared vision for transforming the health care experience will benefit patients and communities," Scott Powder, chief strategy officer of Advocate Aurora, said in a statement. "We're excited to see what we can do together to enhance outcomes and manage costs across the health care continuum."
Population health is a recurring focus of Advocate Aurora collaborations. The system previously partnered with Foxconn Health Technology Business Group on a plan to enhance preventive care and lower employer costs through a smart city connectivity infrastructure and investment in precision medicine and genomics.