Salt Lake City-based health system Intermountain Healthcare has started a new company to provide consulting services to healthcare stakeholders as they transition to value-based payment models.
Dubbed Castell, the company will be led by Rajesh Shrestha, Intermountain’s vice president and chief operating officer of Community Based Care. The idea is to use Intermountain’s resources and learning from its own efforts to shift to value-based care to help other providers on that journey.
Among the tools and services offered by Castell will be an analytics platform, new digital tools to help patients access virtual care and track patient experience and social determinants and best practices developed internally at Intermountain. Clients will also be linked to new innovative practices and products emerging out of the health system.
One of the major offerings from the company is helping providers implement Intermountain’s value-based “Reimagined Primary Care” model, which is designed to help clinicians look at patients more holistically and spend more time on preventive health measures with high-risk patients.
The health system launched the model last year and said it has driven a 60 percent reduction in MA admissions, 25 percent fewer commercial health plan admissions and 20 percent decreased PMPM costs.
“Proven methods for simplifying value-based care are needed across the healthcare industry,” Shrestha said in a statement.
“Backed by Intermountain’s day-to-day frontline experience with a focus on population health management, Castell will deliver impactful solutions that help other organizations improve outcomes and keep costs more affordable.”
As providers come under more fiscal pressure with falling reimbursement rates, hospitals and health systems are seeking alternative forms of revenue to make up the difference.
Outside of Castell, Intermountain launched Empiric Health in 2017, which provides analytics services meant to help improve surgical practice and reduce clinical costs. Another spinout, Alluceo was started earlier this year to offer mental health integration services and risk assessment.
The health system is also one of the founding partners in Civica Rx, a nonprofit generic drugmaker meant to meet hospital demands for medications that have fallen under chronic shortage.
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