CareFirst Hopes Virtual Primary Care Will Ease Access Issues

by Peter Johnson

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, a mid-Atlantic, nonprofit Blues affiliate, recently unveiled a new, plan-owned and operated virtual care service, CloseKnit.

CareFirst seeks 'virtual forward' approach:

• CareFirst tells AIS Health that CloseKnit will offer services including "urgent care, behavioral and mental health, care coordination, [and] insurance navigation," but the insurer hopes most of all that CloseKnit will make primary care more available to its members.
• CloseKnit will include a proprietary mobile app. CareFirst hired veteran health care executive Mary Jane Favazza to run the new venture.
• "I think what we are trying to bring to life here is longitudinal, advanced primary care delivered in a virtual-forward way," Favazza says. The problem CloseKnit seeks to solve, "first and foremost," is that there are still too many people who don't have access to primary care.
• Favazza adds that care coordination is another key strategic goal of the virtual care venture. "It's a team of medical professionals and non-clinicians as well," she says. "So M.D.s, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, but also insurance navigators, care coordinators [and] mental health professionals — all working as part of a multidisciplinary team that forms a relationship with each patient to provide that continuity, that collaboration and that whole-person care."

CloseKnit targets employer market:

• Favazza says CloseKnit will initially be marketed toward the employer market. "CloseKnit came into existence in part to directly address some of those needs for employers with populations that face more barriers [to care] or have a lot of shift work or non-traditional employment arrangements with their associates," Favazza says. "I also think there are other components of this, around mental health, that will turn out to be very appealing to employers. I think many benefit groups still struggle with finding enough [mental health provider] access — people that are in-network and currently taking insurance."
• Going forward, the plan also sees an opportunity to roll out CloseKnit as a Medicaid primary care option. Whether that happens will depend on working with state and District of Columbia Medicaid officials on network oversight and MCO contract issues, along with product design concerns.

From Health Plan Weekly