MEMPHIS, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amerigroup Community Care is bringing the nationally recognized CareMore Model of Care to its TennCare plan members in Shelby County. Amerigroup is one of three plans selected to serve TennCare members in Shelby County. TennCare is Tennessee’s version of Medicaid. Selected TennCare members, formerly with one of the two other managed care companies, will be assigned to Amerigroup toward the end of this year with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2015.
CareMore will be opening three “Care Centers” in Memphis to serve Amerigroup members with a combined investment of $7 million. The centers will be strategically placed in each part of the city: Midtown, Raleigh and Hickory Hill. Each will be staffed by primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, mental health experts, social workers and support staff. Primary care services will be offered, including wellness visits and the treatment of colds, flus and stomach ailments. Disease management services also will be available to address patients with chronic care needs. The centers will include evening and weekend hours for walk-ins.
“As we studied the Medicaid population in Memphis and talked with current providers, the one thing that stood out was the difficulty they have faced in accessing primary care,” said Al King, president of Amerigroup in Tennessee. “We’re committed to addressing this by opening neighborhood centers that will provide a medical home to people who may not have had one and provide support to other primary care physicians for their members who need specialized care management programs.”
CareMore started as a provider group on the west coast. It currently serves around 80,000 Medicare Advantage members in California, Arizona, Nevada and Virginia. The company is known for providing high-touch care to its most at-risk members, resulting in better health outcomes than those experienced in fee-for-service medicine. This includes programs that treat chronic kidney disease, stroke, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, high blood pressure and heart failure. With these programs, CareMore has reduced hospital days among those with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) by 67 percent,i reduced the incidence of stroke among those with hypertension by 40 percentii and reduced amputation rates in diabetics by 66 percent.iii CareMore will leverage these proven programs, as well as additional new programs and services, in serving Amerigroup’s Medicaid members in Shelby County.
“At CareMore, we treat our patients in their entirety, including their medical, social and personal needs,” said CareMore Executive Jean Bisio. “We’ve learned over time that you actually lower health care costs by providing more care, not less. This begins with a full evaluation when patients enter our Care Centers and continues throughout with regular monitoring of chronic conditions. If a patient experiences an acute episode, we have doctors called extensivists to help them return successfully home after a hospitalization.”
“We have worked with Medicaid members in the past who are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare in California and Virginia through CareMore’s special needs Medicare plans,” Bisio added. “And we are eager to develop full-scale programs to serve this population in Shelby County.”
Amerigroup and CareMore are both subsidiaries of WellPoint. For more information about the Amerigroup Community Care plan, visit www.myamerigroup.com/tn.
About Amerigroup
Amerigroup Tennessee helps improve health care access and quality for 212,000 low-income Tennessee citizens by developing innovative care management programs and services. Amerigroup Tennessee strives to arrange care for its members that is not only accessible, but also accountable, comprehensive, integrated and patient-centered. It provides ongoing community relations and outreach to encourage members to become active participants in their health care.
About CareMore
CareMore, a subsidiary of WellPoint, has developed a model of care that is known for identifying the physical, mental and social needs of older adults and other populations and developing innovative programs to successfully address them. The company serves more than 70,000 Medicare members throughout Southern California, Northern California, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., and Richmond, Va., under federally-approved Medicare Advantage contracts. CareMore is also participating in a dual demonstration project in parts of Los Angeles County, in conjunction with state and federal regulators, to coordinate care for people eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. Additionally, CareMore operates a medical group and offers its proven clinical and health technology models to third parties through various subsidiaries.
i Based on individuals in the CareMore ESRD Program in 2013.
Medicare average is unadjusted 2010 data from United States Renal Data
System (www.usrds.org)
accessed July 2012.
ii CareMore internal data.
iii
Non-traumatic lower extremity amputation rate per thousand members per
year, excluding individuals with ESRD. Medicare average is for FFS
beneficiaries, not age adjusted, from most recent data available,
American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2005.