After an exciting 2021 introducing primary care providers across the country to Direct Contracting, we were thrilled to launch our 2022 cohort of providers in the program on January 1, 2022.
Getting to Know Pearl’s Customers
Our 2022 customers represent a variety of regions, practice sizes, and value-based care background, but all have one thing in common: they are ready to make the transition to a new way of managing patients, in a new payment model that rewards them for the value they provide.
Our cohort of 2022 practices are located across 11 different states, practicing in a variety of locales from rural to urban. They range from solo practitioners to practices of 25+ providers, with many focused solely on primary care and others operating a range of different adjacent specialties within their practices.
As we’ve gotten to know these practices, we’ve been incredibly inspired by their passion for patient care, their innovative care models, and their willingness to try something new. We’ve heard about novel approaches to helping patients avoid unnecessary emergency department (ED) visits and readmissions, and out-of-the-box thinking on how to improve communication with patients – with one of our practices even building their own patient app to facilitate 24/7 communication.
We have also seen first-hand the challenges they face as they navigate the ever-increasing burden of the fee-for-service model, the impact of the pandemic on both their patients and their staff, and the struggle of working with multiple technology platforms that simply don’t put their needs first. We’ve seen the endless paper reminders to circle back with patients, the faxes, and all of the spreadsheets they need to combine to know which patients need to be contacted about what specific needs.
Now that they have entered their first performance year in Direct Contracting with our Direct Contracting partners, the entire Pearl team is excited to support both their success in the program and their ability to leverage the flexibility a capitation model allows in delivering patient care in a more efficient, proactive way.
Preparing for Success
In the run-up to the January launch, Pearl worked internally and with our provider partners to get ready for Direct Contracting. We’ve been building the systems we need to support our practices: calculating and disbursing the capitation payments that we’ll be issuing to practices each month, completing all of the necessary steps to ensure participation and compliance with the program requirements, and getting ready for all of the data coming our way in 2022 that will enable Pearl and our provider partners to succeed in Direct Contracting.
We’ve also been working with our practices to get them prepared, conducting a variety of activities ranging from one-on-one consultations, office hours, and a plethora of content available on the Pearl Community platform – a place for our practices to engage with Pearl and with each other as we move forward in Direct Contracting.
Up Next: Launching the Pearl Product
Ensuring that our practices have visibility into their aligned members and issuing payments are only the beginning. We will soon be receiving a treasure trove of additional data from CMS, that will give us deeper insight into the clinical and financial makeup of our providers’ aligned panels. We will be launching three core product views in the coming weeks to bring this insight to our practices: Panel View – the 10,000 foot view of a practice’s panel, enabling a more proactive approach to managing patients and highlighting which patients need the practice’s attention.
Patient View – a deep dive into a specific patient’s information, bringing visibility into the full landscape of their experiences across the healthcare ecosystem.
Performance View – a set of targeted analytics that allows practice leaders to understand their program performance and identify concrete steps to improve.
As we move further into 2022, we’ll continue to build on these core experiences by layering additional, actionable data and intelligence on top of the foundation we are building now. We’ll also incorporate the ability to take the necessary actions from within the product as we support the shift from a visit-centric care model to the more longitudinal, multi-channel, whole care team approach that the capitation financial model enables.
We’re excited to start this journey with our 2022 cohort, and are grateful for their partnership and faith in Pearl. We can’t wait to meet our next group of innovators!
