With only a couple years under its belt since its launch, Patina Health – a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based home-focused primary care medical practice – has secured partnerships with multiple major health plans.

Patina’s work with payers combines care coordination and primary care services for seniors. For a company that has dubbed itself the “easy button for primary care,” the aim is to make care more accessible.

The company launched in 2021. It started serving patients back in February 2022, in partnership with Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia.

“Independence has over 100,000 Medicare Advantage members. They’re the biggest insurance company here in our area, and they’re sort of the hometown player,” Neil Patel, chief health officer of Patina, told Home Health Care News. “They’re a smaller plan nationally, but really big here in the region. Independence really helped us to cultivate a great partnership. Sometimes we think of them as our co-founders, as we were able to launch serving Independence members.”

Flash forward a bit, and Patina has locked down partnerships with United Healthcare, Cigna (NYSE: CI) and Aetna, too.

What’s more, Patel noted that the company is in talks with all of the major national health plans.

“Patina can be a real differentiator, not only for those patients, but for the Medicare Advantage plans, [which] are increasingly focused on improving patient satisfaction, experience and outcomes,” he said. “They’re realizing that a lot of the missing link that they have a hard time filling is just good primary care. They have lots of benefits, like telemedicine and urgent care without relationships, without continuity.”

Patina’s care delivery model combines virtual visits, phone calls and at-home visits.

“We park in your driveway and ring the doorbell with a medical bag when needed,” Patel said. “We’re doing house calls, which strikes some people as old fashioned, with just enough modern technology to make that work for our patients, including video calls and secure messaging.”

The company also utilizes what it calls “health champions.” These individuals are staff members who serve as a liaison between patients and medical professionals to help navigate at-home care situations.

This care delivery model was born out of the company’s need to “deconstruct the clinic.”

“We found by starting there, we’ve been able to develop a care and operating model that meets them right on their sofa or at the kitchen table,” Patel said.

In addition to its own capabilities, Patina leverages the aid of home-based care providers.

“All of my patients are more likely to need [home-based care services], so I get to know all the agencies really well,” Patel said. “I know who’s good. I know who practices the way we practice. They call us when they learn things, they know we will answer the phone.”

Ultimately, Patina wants to play a big role in how seniors experience the aging process.

“We would love a world where patients who get care from Patina report back to their health plans, to their friends, and say ‘my aging experience has improved,’” Patel said. “We focus on health care because that’s often the barrier to aging well, but our goal is really something bigger — aging with confidence, aging with dignity and grace, aging-in-place in the home.”

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