When it comes to providing enhanced health care services, Humana Inc. HUM mostly resorts to Accountable Care arrangements. The latest of its endeavors is the Accountable Care agreement with Partners in Primary Care.
Per the deal, Partners in Primary Care will help Humana provide coordinated health care services for employers and individuals in San Antonio and South Texas.
Under an Accountable Care agreement, health and well-being companies as well as physician practices come forward to collaborate and establish an Accountable Care Organization (ACO). An ACO enables the participants to utilize each others’ resources and expertise to provide coordinated high quality care to patients at affordable costs.
In line with the terms of an ACO, the deal will be beneficial to both the entities. While Humana will benefit from Partners in Primary Care’s 20 years of clinical expertise in the region, the latter will be able to utilize Humana’s personalized care approach to improve health care for communities they serve by 20% by 2020. Notably, Humana Medicare Advantage (MA) members already have access to Partners in Primary Care’s primary care services.
Per the deal, Partners in Primary Care’s primary care services will be available at 10 medical clinics in San Antonio, Floresville, Seguin and New Braunfels.
This transaction reflects another effort by Humana to shift to value-based healthcare from the traditional payment-for-services system for successful population health management. This pay-for-value model is an emerging system that emphasizes more on patient-centric, personalized and affordable healthcare. The system is increasingly gaining popularity and Humana intends to capitalize on the opportunities provided by it with the latest Accountable care arrangement.
Humana has an almost 30-year long history of Accountable Care and serves a huge MA member base of 1.5 million. The company boasts more than 900 Accountable Care relationships across 43 states and Puerto Rico. On Sep 10, 2015, Humana entered yet another partnership agreement pertaining to its Accountable Care portfolio. The health maintenance organization teamed up with Doylestown Health Partners to launch an Accountable Care model in southeastern Pennsylvania. Per the deal, Doylestown Health partners will help Humana provide enhanced health care for its Medicare Advantage (MA) members in Bucks and Montgomery counties.
Humana currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the health maintenance organization (HMO) space are Centene Corp. CNC, Nobilis Health Corp. HLTH and UnitedHealth Group Incorporated UNH. All three stocks hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
Unlock stock picks and a broker-level newsfeed that powers Wall Street.