Papa Launches Applications To Handle Well being-Associated Social Wants, Enhance Star Scores

Papa, a companion care firm, introduced two new applications Monday that can help well being plans’ targets with social drivers of well being (SDOH) and Medicare Star Scores.

Miami-based Papa works with payers and pairs older adults and households with companions known as Papa Friends, who can assist with loneliness, meal prep, errands and family duties. The corporate additionally has a distant crew of social care navigators, who can help with social points the affected person is experiencing. This crew contains social employees, registered nurses, case managers and dietitians. 

Papa’s new SDOH Navigation program addresses social considerations like housing insecurity, meals insecurity, dwelling and environmental security, transportation entry, entry to care, medical monetary insecurity and neighborhood engagement. When a affected person joins Papa, they’ll begin with a social wants screener that identifies what challenges they’ve. Well being plan prospects may also ship member info, and Papa Friends will determine social wants within the dwelling as nicely. Utilizing these knowledge sources, the corporate will have the ability to join sufferers to the help they require, whether or not that be transportation to an appointment, connecting them to neighborhood sources or serving to with paperwork.

“You possibly can’t simply determine the necessity, after which present the referral to a service or a profit,” stated Kelsey McNamara, senior director of analysis at Papa, in an interview. “You actually should be there to know what obstacles are getting in the best way of that comply with via. Everyone’s circumstance is exclusive. And so you have to present that personalised help that may meet individuals the place they’re, you could perceive their obstacles and actually provide you with the options which might be going to make sense for the scenario that they’re in.”

Papa additionally launched its Star Enhancement program to assist Medicare Benefit plans enhance their CMS Star Scores. This system focuses on annual wellness visits, in-home assessments, well being immunizations and preventive screenings, like most cancers screenings and diabetic eye exams. The well being plan will ship member-level knowledge to Papa to assist the corporate perceive sufferers’ gaps. The social care navigators will attain out to these members and resolve these care gaps. The corporate can schedule care visits for sufferers and assist them with transportation to these visits.

“A number of that is actually necessary for these hard-to-engage and hard-to-reach populations, individuals who have disabilities, who even simply getting from the parking zone into the physician’s appointment generally is a actual problem,” McNamara stated. “So having that help there may be so necessary. It’s actually this closed-loop system of addressing particular stars-related care gaps.”

Well being plans can select so as to add these applications to Papa’s core providing for an additional value. They’ll obtain member-level reporting on sufferers’ wants and their enhancements.

The launch of those applications comes at a time when well being plans are dealing with modifications to CMS Star Scores. CMS additionally has a stronger concentrate on well being fairness and created a 10-year well being fairness framework in 2022 that goals to enhance the gathering of knowledge on well being disparities and enhance entry to healthcare, amongst different issues.

“With the pandemic, there’s been a higher emphasis on well being fairness and actually addressing the foundation reason behind well being wants, which are typically social,” McNamara stated. “I feel the previous few years, everyone has actually talked about social drivers of well being and the impacts there. Individuals began to do issues about it, however the actuality is individuals haven’t made a lot progress and there’s a lot to do. So the truth that we’re seeing directives from regulatory our bodies like CMS round well being fairness and SDOH is absolutely making it clear that that is an crucial for well being plans that they should spend money on.”

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