MedArrive, Brave Health Team Up to Care for Dual-Eligible Patients in Texas

In-home care provider MedArrive has partnered with digital health company Brave Health in Texas to provide digital behavioral health services as part of a home health care model.

The two companies announced Tuesday a new referral partnership that expands in-home access to behavioral health services for a vulnerable patient population.

MedArrive is a New York City-based in-home care provider and coordinator while Brave Health is a virtual behavioral health provider based in Miami.

Advertisement

“Since the founding of MedArrive, the vision was that telehealth only goes so far; there isn’t that physical touch,” Bryant Hutson, vice president of business development at MedArrive, said in an interview. “We’ve known that with MedArrive and our platform, we could close that loop” for telehealth companies.

Through the partnership, MedArrive in-home practitioners that identify eligible patients in Texas may make immediate referrals to Brave Health and secure an appointment within 72 hours.

Similarly, Brave Health will work with the case manager of eligible health plan members that may benefit from MedArrive’s home health services to secure those services, according to a news release.

Advertisement

Hutson said the partnership is presently limited to Medicaid members in Texas whose benefits are administered by Molina Healthcare Inc. (NYSE: MOH). But MedArrive’s partnership with Brave Health could grow.

“I think we could be expanding very soon,” Hutson said. “We are in active conversations with other health plan partners and in other states.”

Brave Health expanded into Texas via a partnership with Molina Healthcare. MedArrive already worked with Molina in Texas through a care program for dual-eligible members. These members are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare.

Across the U.S. the dual-eligible population totaled about 12.2 million people in 2019, according to statistics from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC).

On the Medicare side, these members make up 19% of the population but account for about 34% of Medicare spending. On the Medicaid side, they make up about 14% of the population but 30% of the spending.

A recent report finds that about 64% of dual-eligible patients also have behavioral health conditions.

“As we got this program up and running, we realized that many of these patients also had significant behavioral health issues — depression, schizophrenia — often layered on top of the multiple chronic conditions that we were managing,” Hutson said.

In addition to partnering with Brave Health in other locations, MedArrive is seeking other partnerships that help bring additional value and specialty into the homes of the patients.

MedArrive employs more than 50,000 providers. The firm hires EMTs to administer chronic condition management, transitional care, readmission prevention, urgent care, vaccinations, and palliative care, among other services.

Other partnerships could include other telehealth providers, remote patient monitoring companies, or virtual pharmacy companies, Hutson said.

“There’s a very well-documented interplay of behavioral health issues and social determinants of health issues that patients face every day; It’s a vicious cycle between the two,” Hutson said. “When we combine the virtual care, the in-person care and behavioral health care all in the home, we’re really able to check multiple boxes, meet multiple needs all at once, and really deliver a concierge experience that traditionally these folks are not used to.”

Additional reporting was provided by Andrew Donlan.

Companies featured in this article:

,