Value-based care company Guidehealth, which serves nearly 500,000 patients, announced a partnership with specialty care telehealth company Story Health on Monday to address high demand for cardiologists and increasing specialist care deserts.
Story’s virtual cardiac care aims to support patients in their next steps of care after a diagnosis like heart failure, hypertension and arrhythmia. Health coaches provide additional education about the condition, which relieves providers of some time spent on educating patients, and allows patients more time to understand their conditions. In some cases, StoryHealth offers remote physiologic monitoring to collect relevant data for cardiologists, as many exacerbations happen outside the clinic, Tom Stanis, CEO and co-founder of Story Health, told Fierce Healthcare.
As a result of the partnership, Guidehealth’s partner health systems and clinically integrated networks can access Story Health’s virtual cardiology care. The value-based partnership will allow partner health systems to provide more patient-centered cardiology care for patients and ongoing support between visits, the organizations said.
The companies hope the partnership will improve patient outcomes and reduce costs for health systems, given that major cardiac episodes land patients in the emergency room.
Guidehealth, launched last year, further supports health systems through its HealthGuides, which work with clinical staff to support tasks like prior authorization and in-network referrals. The AI-native workflow also helps clinicians identify the most at-risk patients.
HealthGuides will refer qualifying patients to StoryHealth’s cardiology program, where its health coaches will keep the patients’ cardiology care on track.
“Reducing total costs doesn’t have to come at the expense of delivering high-quality care at scale. Story Health has a proven track record of engaging patients with heart conditions in their health and improving outcomes,” Guidehealth co-founder and CEO Sanjay Doddamani said in a statement. “Adding Story Health to our ecosystem both allows providers to exceed their care quality goals and ensures patients aren’t waiting to receive ongoing care, especially between visits when they may have higher disease burden or complications that can lead to expensive emergency department visits. This innovative approach directly integrates specialized cardiovascular care for high-risk patients with complex care plans.”
“We are thrilled to partner with Guidehealth to extend the care PCPs in value-based arrangements can provide to their patients by delivering a new model of direct specialty care," Nita Sommers, StoryHealth's co-founder and president, said in a statement.
As a new player, Guidehealth has big ambitions to help providers succeed in value-based care models and improve their performance in risk-based contracts.
Back in December, Guidehealth bought Arcadia's managed service organization and value-based care service division to build out its tools and services for providers. The company also is partnering with Arcadia to use the company's data analytics platform to power its newly acquired offering.