New Curana, Serviam Partnership Aims to Expand Value-Based Care in Senior Living

Curana Health is partnering with Serviam Care Network in a move aimed at bringing more value-based care services to senior living communities.

Under the partnership, announced Monday, Serviam will add Curana’s health care platform to as many as 40 Virginia-based assisted living and memory care communities later this year, according to Serviam CEO, Tim Donnelly.

Through the platform, senior living companies can get the “infrastructure, services, and scale that operators need to effectively participate and succeed in value-based care,” according to an announcement.

Curana’s multiple business segments include a provider-led medical group, Curana Health Medical Group; Medicare Advantage health plans from AllyAlign Health; and a Medicare Accountable Care Organization called the Curana Health ACO.

The new partnership between the two organizations aims to break down the silos of both senior living operations and health care in what Serviam CEO Tim Donnelly called a “higher path counsel.”

Serviam and Curana have identified the operators that will be part of the initial integration but declined to disclose them prior to a public announcement slated for September of this year.

“We have a longer-term goal to get that number closer to 150 communities over the next several years,” Donnelly told Senior Housing News.

Serviam, which acquired senior living lead platform SeniorVu last July, now includes 20 operators in 40 states with more than 600 communities.

“We are excited about the fact that value-based care is very much dependent on not only a payer providing incentives but also providing a primary care physician, which Curana has done so wonderfully within the senior living industry,” Donnelly said.

Serviam’s role will include handling enrolling residents as patients into the online tools that will capture their relevant information to begin the value-based health care approach.

“We have software in place that enables the collaboration of all the care team members, whether it is the doctor, the nurse practitioner, the dietician, the executive director, the sales director or the activities director,” Donnelly said.

Curana and Serviam chose to start in Virginia for a number of reasons including a collection of current partners in adjacent fields like senior living health care technology and therapists with a senior living focus.

Additionally, Curana already has a senior living health care network in the state along with two Medicare Advantage plans, according to Curana Executive VP of Strategic Initiatives, Amy Kaszak.

“We plan to launch with Serviam in September 2023,” Kaszak said. “That sets us up very well regarding potential plan enrollment as well as making sure that we’ve got PCPs established for accountable care organizations and gives us time for the technology to be established.”

“We are considering a couple of other ones that I think we’d like to save, maybe for a little bit later … but Virginia is the primary focus,” Kaszak said.

For providers like Curana, finding ways to work with smaller communities, like those with between 50 and 100 units, has proven time-consuming.

“For us to go community-by-community is a haul. It’s harder for us to get the population density we need to implement our care efficiently and effectively,” Kaszak told SHN.

The value-based care approach financially incentivizes health care professionals like physicians to focus on patient satisfaction, metric-driven outcomes and clinical guidelines, rather than increasing the volume of patients seen.

Creating real-time information that is accessible to everyone on a patient’s care team is a core tenant of value-based care called the “patient-centered medical home.” This theoretical home is headed up by the patient’s primary care physician, who then directs a clinical care team that includes specialists and frontline caretakers.

And providing a primary care physician for assisted living and memory care residents is something Curana does well enough for a founding member of Serviam to recommend as a partner.

Bickford Senior Living, one of Serviam’s original backers and a champion of value-based care in senior living, led to the two organizations coming together.

“They introduced us to Curana and allowed us to understand where the pieces fit together,” Donnelly said.

Bickford earlier this year revealed its own value-based care platform called “Higher Path” and announced it will coordinate health care services to its 60-community network.

In that partnership, Austin, Texas-based Curana will provide primary care physicians (PCP) who are part of an Accountable Care Organization and will make it easier for new residents to find a primary care doctor to provide services to them in the communities where they live.

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