Health Systems and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Enter Joint Venture to Improve Population Health in New Hampshire

Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Elliot Health System, and Frisbie Memorial Hospital are entering into a joint venture with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care to form a new company that will improve the quality of healthcare in New Hampshire and reduce costs.

The entity, called Benevera Health, will improve healthcare coordination by bringing together clinical, financial, and operational data from across partner institutions to provide actionable analytics for clinicians to further improve the quality and efficiency of patient care. At the center of this approach will be locally based care advocates who will identify early opportunities to engage patients—especially those with chronic, complex, or emerging conditions—and provide them with one-on-one support. Benevera Health will help physicians raise the standard of care, leading to a better patient experience and better health outcomes.

The new company will be jointly owned; all the partners will share financial and clinical outcome responsibility for the patients in their care. Together they will make significant investments in technology systems, analytics, and personnel, and will share financial risk. Benevera Health is expected to drive down the cost of healthcare, allowing Harvard Pilgrim to keep premiums lower and more competitive for members. In 2016, premiums will be about 4% lower than they would be without this partnership, with continuing improvement expected in following years.

Benevera Health is a population health improvement company—not an insurance company—owned and governed by its partner healthcare systems/hospitals and Harvard Pilgrim. The hospital/health system partners will have a voice in the design of Harvard Pilgrim’s insurance products and strategy in New Hampshire.

This new joint venture will support all of Harvard Pilgrim’s over 80,000 fully insured members in New Hampshire, regardless of which plan they have. Additionally, there are plans to support all self-insured members. Harvard Pilgrim’s product portfolio will continue to offer full-network plans as well as its ElevateHealth high-performance network plans.

Benevera Health’s sophisticated approach to population health improvement will:

• Provide healthcare clinicians with access to more robust information about best 
practices and care outcome patterns to guide their care recommendations 

• Offer outreach by trained New Hampshire healthcare professionals to address emerging, complex, or chronic health issues and identify appropriate solutions
• Establish thoughtful member health monitoring systems to allow timely healthcare intervention to reduce the need for urgent care, thus reducing costs and providing
better health outcomes
• Provide information to allow members and their physicians to make informed choices about specialty physicians, facilities, and treatments based on associated outcomes 

• Allow for comprehensive analysis of payer and provider data to optimize care delivery
and cost, based on the New Hampshire patient experience

Benevera Health will begin its operations on January 1, 2016. The partners are beginning the process of hiring about 40 healthcare professionals, most of whom will work at the partner hospitals as patient care advocates. The new company will be led by Corbin Petro, the current president of ElevateHealth; ElevateHealth was launched in 2013 as a partnership among Harvard Pilgrim, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and Elliot Health System and is the precursor to Benevera Health. Previously, Petro was the chief operating officer at MassHealth, Massachusetts’ Office of Medicaid. She has an extensive background in healthcare, including advising a U.S. senator on health reform, and roles at Bain and Company, Goldman Sachs, Deloitte Consulting, and American Management Systems. Petro will report to a board composed of senior leaders from each of the partners and will co-lead Harvard Pilgrim’s New Hampshire market team, bringing increased provider input to Harvard Pilgrim’s New Hampshire business.

Source: Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.