On Jan. 1, 2019, we began to offer the in-home palliative care services of Aspire Health to our commercial and most Medicare Advantage members.*
Aspire Health is the nation’s largest provider of non-hospice, community-based palliative care. Since launching in 2013, it has collaborated with doctors to care for more than 50,000 patients with advanced illness. In Connecticut, Dr. Tara Friedman is the senior medical director.
Aspire Health teams include clinicians — doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses — plus social workers, chaplains and patient care coordinators. They provide experienced, compassionate “eyes and ears in the home” of patients with serious illness. They are on-call for patients and their families 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Aspire Health clinicians can prescribe medications and provide needed support to manage symptoms, such as pain, difficulty breathing, fatigue, nausea and difficulty sleeping.
Aspire Health will notify your office when a patient has accepted the offer of palliative care. Aspire Health has a robust data collection system that allows it to track and report to you patients’ status and quality metrics. Further, its system produces a summary of every visit and sends it to your office. Aspire Health will follow your preferences and protocols for communicating about patients and coordinating their care.
ConnectiCare covers the full cost of Aspire Health’s services. Aspire Health will apply its proprietary algorithm to identify ConnectiCare members who could benefit from palliative care. You and other health care providers may also refer patients who are ConnectiCare members by calling (844) 232-0500.
*Please note, this new program will not be offered to our members with ConnectiCare Medicare Advantage Passage Dual (HMO SNP) plan.
