OhioHealth's plan to provide high-touch primary care for seniors

OhioHealth leaders needed a dramatically different approach to care for lower-income seniors with little access to quality primary-care providers.Too many patients with chronic diseases like diabetes and heart failure were coming into their system's emergency departments and hospitals.The not-for-profit system's leaders wanted a more proactive primary-care model that focused on keeping these patients healthier, even if that initially cut into hospital revenue. The idea was to use multidisciplinary primary-care teams that spent a lot of time with high-risk patients.These new practices would accept full financial risk under capitation contracts with plans serving Medicare Advantage patients as well as plans serving patients dually eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.