Aspire Health for Medicaid members in need of palliative care

Effective March 1, 2021, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Healthcare Solutions will partner with Aspire Health* to provide palliative care services to members facing advanced illness.

 

Aspire offers a solution to the fragmented and expensive care that patients so often experience during the last chapter of life. Aspire helps patients to increase their overall comfort, increase their satisfaction with both their PCP and their health plan, minimize the risk of unnecessary or unwanted hospitalizations, and help ensure patients receive care aligned with their goals and values.

 

Aspire offers palliative services through two modalities, dependent upon the county where the patient resides:

1. Nurse Practitioner-led, home-based program
2. Palliative Social Worker-led telephonic program.

Both programs include wraparound support from a specialized interdisciplinary team with 24/7 on-call support and the oversight of Aspire’s lead physicians to enhance care to patients and families, personalize their experience, and facilitate timely intervention.

 

The typical Aspire patient is often a physician’s sickest. Patients identified for Aspire tend to have high utilization costs and may confront multiple illnesses, such as chronic heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, advanced cancers, dementia, geriatric frailty, chronic or end-stage renal disease, chronic liver disease, cerebrovascular accidents, and other neurologic illnesses. These patients may see multiple providers or frequently seek uncoordinated care in emergency rooms and hospitals.

 

Additionally, they may have limited family support or family caregivers with their own health concerns. The confluence of these factors often results in frequent hospitalizations for uncontrolled symptoms and/or exacerbations of chronic disease. Through patient and caregiver education and expert symptom management, Aspire’s intervention is designed to align medical care with each patient’s goals and minimize unnecessary emergency department visits and hospitalizations, thus impacting care quality and driving value to patients, families, and referring physicians.

 

More information is available at aspirehealthcare.com or by calling the 24/7 Patient and Referral Hotline at 1-844-232-0500.

 

* Aspire Health is an independent company providing telephonic palliative care services on behalf of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Healthcare Solutions.

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