Olio’s platform improves the quality of care while decreasing readmission rates and length of stay by making the engagement between health systems, payers, and post-acute providers easy.
PHOENIX, Ariz. (Oct. 26, 2022) – Banner Health (Phoenix, AZ) and its Insurance Division have expanded their partnership with Olio Health (Indianapolis, IN) to scale and simplify how their teams work in the post-acute provider network. Olio, a user-friendly software application, helps to simplify communication and care coordination, significantly reducing the exchange of information via phone message and fax.
In March of 2022, Banner and Olio began working together to mutually serve the 15,000 Banner Medicare Advantage Dual HMO D-SNP members during their stay in a Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF). The intended goal of this effort is to improve the clinical outcomes for these members by facilitating greater engagement and collaboration between Banner Health and its post-acute network.
Banner Health’s Medical Management team worked with each SNF using the application to appropriately manage each member’s utilization of skilled benefits and execute its readmission reduction strategies—treating members in place, when appropriate. In 90 days, Banner Health saw a noticeable improvement in each of these areas, while also realizing a significant time savings and improved staff satisfaction.
As a result, Banner is now deploying the Olio application to manage more than 135,000 of their members for four different Medicare Advantage health plans and for a Medicaid plan: Banner – University Family Care/AHCCCS Complete Care (B – UFC/ACC). This collaboration is going to include 80% of Arizona’s Skilled Nursing Facilities; the application is available at no cost to the SNFs.
Susan Benedetti, chief health services officer, Population Health Services Organization, believes this platform will increase the communication and efficiencies between the skilled nursing facilities and the utilization management staff. This will result in better patient outcomes by quickly addressing coordination complexities and will also lead to provider and member satisfaction.
“We are pleased to launch the Olio application with our skilled nursing facility partners,” said Benedetti. “The Olio Health team is great to work with and were very involved in the planning and implementation. They met with every facility to introduce the program, reinforce the goals of using the application and provide training. In addition, they included input from our staff to develop process flows that increased opportunities to communicate between the facilities and UM team and resulted in efficiencies for everyone. We are excited about our continued relationship with Olio for the benefit of our members.”
“I’m very excited that Banner Health is expanding its relationship with Olio, and all 35 of our Arizona facilities will have the opportunity to use this application,” said Lisa Leveque, vice-president, Strategic Alignment and Care Transitions for Bandera Healthcare, a subsidiary of Ensign Group. “When they launched the HMO D-SNP population in March, it quickly became apparent that Olio was going to save our teams tremendous time, while improving our relationship with Banner and how we work together going forward. We are grateful for the Olio team’s partnership and their commitment to our success.”
“The team at Banner Health has been one of the most collaborative and innovative teams that Olio has had the pleasure of working with,” said Ben Forrest, CEO of Olio Health. “I’ve been extremely impressed with their commitment on behalf of their members. It’s been inspiring and motivating for our team at Olio. We are grateful to be playing such an important role in Banner Health’s coordination of care and management of their members’ benefits across the state of Arizona.”
With the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) focused on having all Medicare beneficiaries in a care relationship with accountability for quality and total cost of care by 2030 (CMS Innovation Strategy Refresh, 2021), population health organizations are encouraged to explore solutions that will scale their value-based care strategies in other levels of care across the continuum.
Across the U.S., Olio currently has more than 450,000 attributed lives being managed by its clients and 863 post-acute provider partners. At the time of this press release, the 2022 year-to-date Readmission Rate from SNF and Home Health levels of care is 13.1%.
About Banner Health
Banner Health is one of the largest, secular nonprofit health care systems in the country. In addition to 30 acute-care hospitals, Banner also has an academic division, Banner – University Medicine, and a partnership with one of the world’s leading cancer programs, Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center. Banner’s array of services includes a health insurance division, employed physician groups, outpatient surgery centers, urgent care locations, home care and hospice services, retail pharmacies, stand-alone imaging centers, physical therapy and rehabilitation, behavioral health services, a research division and a nursing registry. To make health care easier, 100% of Banner-employed doctors are available for virtual visits, and Banner operates a free 24/7 nurse line for health questions or concerns. Patients may also reserve spots at Banner Urgent Care locations and can book appointments online with many Banner-employed doctors. Headquartered in Arizona, Banner Health also has locations in California, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming. For more information, visit bannerhealth.com.
About Olio
Olio redefines how population health and utilization management teams work with post-acute providers. Olio’s software increases the volume and scale of engagement between payers, health systems and physician groups in partnership with the entirety of their post-acute ecosystem. Olio provides all users with the workflow and collaboration tools needed to drive outcomes and operational efficiencies for patients transitioning through various sites of care.