Visiting Nurse Association Health Group (VNAHG) and Parker Health Group recently formed a partnership to launch the “Parker Advanced Care Institute at VNAHG,” a home-based primary care joint venture.
The partnership stems from a previous relationship between the two organizations, as Parker has awarded grants to VNAHG over the past three years. The grant funding was meant to fuel the growth and expansion of VNAHG’s Advanced Care Institute, which was established in 2015.
“As Parker Health Group was working closely with Dr. Landers and his team, we learned a lot,” Donna Silbert, chief strategy officer for Parker Health Group, told Home Health Care News. “We’ve traditionally been a residential services provider for elders, but as we’re moving forward, we know that providing service at the home is critical. Not everyone wants to live in a nursing home.”
New Jersey-based Parker Health Group is a nonprofit aging services organization. The company operates nursing homes, assisted living communities, memory care centers, post-acute rehabilitation facilities, adult day care sites and more.
Meanwhile, VNAHG is the nation’s second-largest not-for-profit home health care organization.
Under this partnership, VNAHG and Parker Health Group will share equal membership and leadership of Parker Advanced Care Institute at VNAHG. The newly formed venture will deliver home-based primary medical care through an operating agreement with Visiting Physician Services, as well as with palliative clinicians working within New Jersey’s VNA Health Group.
The larger goal of Parker Advanced Care Institute at VNAHG is to create greater access to home-based primary care, VNAHG President and CEO Dr. Steve Landers told HHCN.
“Our big goal here is to serve more people with a really important but not widely available service, which is in-home primary medical care,” he said. “We also want that care to be more comprehensive, more complete in terms of using telehealth services, psychosocial supports, counseling, behavioral health services and other ancillary care [patients] might need.”
Both organizations have high expectations for Parker Advanced Care Institute at VNAHG.
The new venture is expected to expand the reach of the Advanced Care Institute, which has served more than 6,000 patients through roughly 40,000 home visits annually.
VNAHG and Parker Health Group made bringing primary care services into the home its focus because of the ability to address a myriad of health conditions among seniors.
“When you’re talking about older people that have multiple chronic medical problems – as well as geriatric syndromes, such as cognitive issues and mobility concerns – they need primary medical care that has a geriatric focus,” Landers said. “If you’re low mobility and can’t easily get out to the clinic, that could be a barrier.”
Parker Advanced Care Institute at VNAHG will also allow for more efficient care coordination, according to Landers.
“Unfortunately, sometimes, when you have older people with multiple medical problems, they might go to the diabetes program on Monday, the heart failure program on Tuesday, the wound clinic on Wednesday and the neurologist on Thursday,” he said. “Not everybody’s talking to each other, and the coordination goes downhill, and the stress goes up. We provide a medical primary care ‘quarterback’ model.”
For now, both organizations are focused on making sure that those who would benefit most from this care know about its availability and overall benefits.
“[We want] people, elders and their families to understand that this primary care practice exists,” Silbert said. “These services are available to people in their home — your traditional house calls business. [That’s] work we’ll be doing collectively. VNAHG has done a wonderful job in getting new patients and sharing this, but we’ll be doing more of that.”
Additional reporting by Andrew Donlan
Companies featured in this article:
Parker Health Group, Visiting Nurse Association Health Group
