Nurse tending to patient at home in hospital bed

News from the field of home-based primary care as Humana partners with DispatchHealth to provide hospital-level care in the home to its members with multiple chronic conditions.

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To better care for its members with multiple chronic conditions, health insurance giant Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) is teaming up with DispatchHealth to offer advanced hospital-level care in the home.

While the news comes roughly two months after federal health care policymakers paved the way for hospital-at-home Medicare reimbursement, the Humana-DispatchHealth agreement is something the two companies are opting to do themselves.

Louisville, Kentucky-based Humana is both a payer and in-home care provider. Its home-based care business lines include Humana At Home and Kindred at Home, the largest home health provider in the U.S., according to LexisNexis. The company’s Medicare Advantage (MA) memberships include 4.5 million beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, Denver, Colorado-based DispatchHealth offers mobile high-acuity services through its emergency medicine-trained teams. The company currently operates in 18 states.

Under the Humana-DispatchHealth agreement, announced Monday, the pair will work together to initially offer hospital-level care services in Denver and Tacoma, Washington. Later this year, the initiative will expand to serve patients in Texas, Arizona and Nevada.

The new in-home care initiative is focused on treating medical conditions that require urgent intervention but not necessarily hospitalization. Some of the chronic conditions include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart failure, cellulitis, urinary tract infections and more. Read more