Guidehealth and Story Health are partners for value-based cardiology care

Digital health platform company Guidehealth has announced a partnership with Story Health, a digital health company focused on specialty care delivery, to offer a value-based cardiology care program to health systems and clinically integrated networks.

Health systems and CINs that partner with Guidehealth can integrate Story Health’s program to support at-risk patients with heart conditions such as heart failure, hypertension and irregular heart rhythms, with the goal of improving care while reducing the overall cost of care.

Dallas-based Guidehealth recently acquired the managed services organization (MSO) and value-based care services division of data analytics platform company Arcadia. The company says it helps physicians by strengthening relationships with affiliated networks, improving the financial performance of value-based risk contracts, enabling an increase in high-value referrals and reducing administrative burdens.

The company describes its platform as a combination of virtually embedded “health guides” and AI-native workflows to bring together a patient’s predictive data at the right time, maximizing health outcomes and benefits for doctors and patients alike.

Guidehealth’s Healthguides will identify eligible patients and assist them in enrolling in the Story Health program. Story Health’s dedicated clinical care team will work directly with patients using the technology platform to get and maintain their care on track. The Healthguides will ensure that care providers are kept informed and involve them in any escalations of care.

“Cardiovascular disease is one of the most costly and deadly conditions in our healthcare system. Many patients could avoid adverse events leading to hospitalization if they received more frequent care, which can largely be done virtually and asynchronously,” Story Health co-founder and president Nita Sommers said in a statement. “We are thrilled to partner with Guidehealth to expand the care that PCPs in value-based arrangements can provide to their patients by delivering a new model of direct specialty care.”

“Reducing overall costs does not have to come at the expense of high-quality care at scale. Story Health has a proven track record of engaging patients with heart disease in their health and improving outcomes,” said Sanjay Doddamani, MD, co-founder and CEO of Guidehealth, in a statement. “Adding Story Health to our ecosystem will enable providers to exceed their quality of care goals and ensure patients do not have to wait for ongoing care, especially between visits when they may have a higher disease burden or complications that can lead to expensive emergency department visits. This innovative approach integrates specialized cardiovascular care for high-risk patients directly into complex treatment plans,” added Doddamani, who is a cardiologist.

Guidehealth serves more than 500,000 people and partners with multiple health systems and CINs across the country to improve access to care and improve health outcomes within value-based models. The company says it offers a technology platform and clinical support services that integrate directly into primary care workflows, enabling providers to better coordinate care and close gaps in care at a lower overall cost while reducing administrative burden.

In a February 2024 interview with Healthcare Innovation, Kirk Garratt, MD, medical director of the Center for Heart & Vascular Health at ChristianaCare, and Story Health CEO Tom Stanis discussed their collaboration to improve health outcomes for patients with hypertension and heart failure in Wilmington, Delaware.

The partnership leverages Story Health’s hybrid digital platform, which provides patients with a personal health coach to ensure they adhere to their treatment plan and meet treatment goals. With this approach, ChristianaCare says it has been able to eliminate some health disparities and significantly improve the number of Black patients who adhere to prescribed doses of guideline-directed medical therapy for heart failure.

According to ChristianaCare, black patients in particular have made remarkable progress:

• 2.6-fold improvement in target doses of beta-blockers (76 percent);
• 2.7-fold improvement in target doses of ACE/ARB/ARNIs (54 percent); and
• 2.2-fold improvement in target doses of MRAs (57 percent).

ChristianaCare also saw an improvement in black patients taking SGLT2 inhibitors, from 32 percent at baseline to 74 percent.

Garratt said the impetus for getting health systems to focus on this work was initially to avoid penalties for recidivism in state insurance programs, adding that the number of ChristianaCare patients covered by state plans has gradually increased to 66 percent.

Preventing recidivism penalties was the easy goal, he said. “That was the goal that was easiest to achieve – to reduce recidivism rates. That’s how our model was originally developed. We select patients to be admitted to Story Health when they have had an acute hospitalization for heart failure,” Garratt said. “But our conversations are now moving beyond that and we’re thinking about preventing not just recidivism but also admissions. Can we implement a better plan of care by leveraging partners like Story Health to prevent people from ending up in the hospital in the first place?”