Seattle, WA (August 1, 2019) - Accolade, the leader in personalized advocacy solutions for employers, today announced a new solution that guides employees and their dependents (“members”) to the highest performing doctors and gives them personalized nurse support* at every step in their healthcare journey. Enabled by the company’s acquisition of MD Insider, Accolade Total Care combines data-driven physician quality insights with cost transparency to ensure members have the best health outcomes, while reducing costs for them and their employers.
“The healthcare consumer needs a fundamentally new experience—one that’s transparent, efficient and personalized so they can get precise, high-quality care every time,” said Rajeev Singh, Accolade CEO. “It starts with selecting top-notch doctors—both primary care physicians and specialists, whether an oncologist, surgeon, behavioral health provider or any other. Then each person’s care must be coordinated to avoid errors and inefficiency, which is especially challenging for those managing one or more conditions. Accolade is delivering on both fronts by bringing together incredible data science on provider performance and experienced nurses who coordinate care in a trusted, personalized way for each person and their family.”
Guiding People to their Best Primary Care Doctors and Specialists
Accolade Total Care provides extensive intelligence on provider quality and cost to members as they conduct their own provider searches, and to the Accolade Health Assistant® and nurse representatives supporting them when they need help. Understanding the member’s care needs, the nurse uses data intelligence generated from 13+ billion claims representing 255 million unique patients, 950,000 physicians and 1.8 million total providers to present the best primary care physician or specialist options to the member, so that the member can make a more informed decision. This intelligence, gained through the company’s acquisition of MD Insider, enables Accolade members and nurses to use an intelligent platform to analyze physician quality based on a wide range of factors, including diagnosis, procedure and condition-specific clinical experience, network status, education, and risk-adjusted outcome metrics such as complications, readmission rates, and length of stay.
After the member selects the best doctor for them, an Accolade nurse will have the capability to schedule appointments, educate the member and prepare them for visits, follow up after each visit, and provide clinical guidance and support. Members also can opt to conduct their own provider quality and cost searches through the Accolade mobile app or online portal, and schedule appointments in the same place. Companies that take advantage of Accolade Total Care alongside Accolade Premier will receive additional provider services.
Coordinating Care at Every Stage of Health
Individuals managing two or more chronic conditions will see up to 11 different doctors and specialists in one year,1creating a fragmented experience that can result in unnecessary tests, gaps in care and up to 76% higher medical costs.2 Accolade puts the member on a different path, not just by finding the best doctors for their unique conditions but also by supporting the individual and helping coordinate care at every stage of health.
Accolade nurses also can help members’ primary care physicians select the best specialists for their patients, and educate and support members before, during and after a care event. Because of Accolade’s 360-degree view of the member, nurses can fill in critical gaps for doctors about each member’s life context and social determinants of health, which play a significant role in health outcomes. Through trusted, long-term relationships with individuals and their families, and collaborating with the member’s medical providers, Accolade nurses serve as a vital hub, improving care continuity and compliance with care plans.
“Comcast has been working with Accolade for the last decade as an early investor through Comcast Ventures, and ongoing advisor to Accolade through the Total Rewards team. Since then, Accolade’s approach to health engagement has helped Comcast elevate the health and well-being of our employees,” said Shawn Leavitt, Senior Vice President, Total Rewards for Comcast. “The opportunity to now combine Accolade’s world-class service and already advanced technology platform with this new solution is tremendous – it has the potential to be a game-changer, to go beyond support and truly empower our employees and their families in their well-being.”
Acquisition of MD Insider
With the acquisition of MD Insider, Accolade gains access to a world-class machine learning platform that produces experiential and performance insights on millions of providers across the healthcare system. MD Insider’s team of data scientists, software engineers and healthcare experts has developed a platform that ingests and enriches huge volumes of the latest performance data about physicians—billions of rows of data from thousands of institutions and millions of doctor-patient interactions and events. Analyzing this data, the platform algorithmically identifies key physician performance insights in areas of experience and quality, which enables proprietary matching of patients with the right doctors.
“Physician performance has a material impact on the quality, experience and cost of healthcare,” said Eric Wilson, CEO of MD Insider. “We’re excited to join the Accolade team and see the power of our provider data insight put into the hands of millions of individuals, their families and Accolade nurses.”
Accolade Total Care will be available in early 2020. For more information about the company and Accolade Total Care, contact us at inquiries@accolade.com.
About Accolade
Accolade is the leader in personalized advocacy solutions that improve the experience, outcomes and cost of healthcare for employers, health plans and their members. With a unique blend of compassionate advisors, clinical experts and intelligent technologies, we engage individuals and families in their health, establish trust, and influence their decisions at every stage of care. Accolade connects the widest array of personal health data and programs to present a single point of entry to the most effective health and benefits resources, while coordinating with providers at every step. Accolade consistently achieves 60 and higher Net Promoter Scores, 98% consumer satisfaction ratings, and up to 15% employer cost savings. Accolade has been recognized as one of the nation’s 25 most promising companies by Forbes, a fastest-growing private healthcare company by Inc. 5000, and is consistently rated a Top Workplace across the country. For more information, visit www.accolade.com.
*Accolade does not provide medical care; rather, Accolade nurses assist members in better understanding and navigating their benefits while making informed decisions about selecting high quality, lower cost physicians and medical care.
1Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Center Study, 2017
2 “Care Fragmentation, Quality and Costs among Chronically Ill Patients,” American Journal of Managed Care, May 2015
