How CareMore Saves Through Investment in Prevention and Early Intervention
<p>When you spend more to prevent and slow the progression of disease, you end up spending less to treat it. That’s the basic philosophy of CareMore, a California-based Medicare Advantage plan and care provider that’s built its business around identifying the high-risk patients most likely to need a full range of coordinated primary care, behavioral health, and specialty services.</p><p>CareMore, which serves 130,000 people across six states, is the subject of the latest profile in the Commonwealth Fund’s <em>Models for High-Need, High-Cost Patients</em> series. Martha Hostetter, Sarah Klein, and Douglas McCarthy explore how CareMore has been able to achieve 20 percent fewer hospital admissions, 23 percent fewer bed days, and a 4 percent shorter length-of-stay for its members compared with beneficiaries covered under fee-for-service Medicare.</p>
<p>The authors also examine the company’s efforts to spread its model, both by serving Medicaid beneficiaries and by partnering with health systems that are moving toward risk-based contracting.</p>