BALTIMORE, Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- XLHealth Chairman and CEO Patrick Hervy announced today that in just nine months the disease management firm has recruited the 15,000 patients -- the federal government’s goal -- for its Medicare disease management program.
XLHealth Executive Vice President Paul Serini noted that the firm has been asked to present information about its unique, successful recruiting approach to representatives from the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who oversee Medicare demonstration programs.
Successful recruitment and engagement of Medicare beneficiaries to actively participate in disease management represents one of the greatest obstacles healthcare companies must overcome to implement their programs. In the Medicare Disease Management Demonstration, the XLHealth program has been able to reliably hit enrollment projections each month.
Serini pointed out that there were many lessons learned along the way, even though the recruitment effort took place in a comparatively short timeframe. “We believe that physicians must be an integral part of the process, participants need to be educated and actively involved, and technology has to be used in an effective manner.” Good programs, however, do not necessarily translate into a good recruitment effort. “Gaining participants’ trust is one of the most important elements of success,” Serini said.
XLHealth is conducting a disease management demonstration project in large cities and surrounding areas throughout the State of Texas to test whether disease management can improve care for chronically ill Medicare patients. The company predicts that the 10,000 beneficiaries enrolled in the XLHealth program will experience, in aggregate, a 50 percent reduction in amputations and other serious diabetes foot complications and a 50 percent decrease in repeat heart failure events. The company also plans to delay the progression of renal failure in diabetic patients by 25 percent. The additional 5000 patients in the pilot are part of a control group.
CMS also recently selected XLHealth to provide disease management services in Tennessee. This program, Voluntary Chronic Care Improvement Program (CCIP), is a major new initiative to help improve the quality of care for chronically ill beneficiaries under Medicare fee-for-service. XLHealth will be responsible for recruiting and offering disease management services to beneficiaries with diabetes, congestive heart failure and all related co- morbidities in Tennessee.
XLHealth has been awarded a series of significant new contracts and increasing numbers of covered individuals in the past year. The firm has more than doubled the number of its employees and is generating a more than a 10- fold increase in revenues over the last 12-month period.
Additionally, the Baltimore based firm recently closed on a private placement of $63,750,000 of Preferred Stock and related options to GS Capital Partners 2000, L.P., a private equity fund managed by Goldman, Sachs & Co., and to Dr. Norman Payson, the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Oxford Health Plans. The investment represents one of the largest capital financing transactions in the growing disease management sector and marks Goldman Sachs Capital Partners’ entry into the field.
About XLHealth
XLHealth (http://www.xlhealth.com/) has been at the forefront of disease management innovations since its inception. Founded by physicians, many of whom were affiliated with Johns Hopkins, XLHealth replaces the more customary remote telephone “call-center” or direct mail support with ongoing, face-to- face meetings with patients and physicians. XLHealth also uses tight coordination of care, behavior modification, and in-depth patient profiling integrated with claims, pharmacy, and lab information to generate sophisticated, predictive modeling. The firm emphasizes preventing avoidable and expensive disease complications and hospitalizations.
XLHealth
CONTACT: Amy Levy, +1-301-656-6212, or amy@levypr.com, for XLHealth
Web site: http://www.xlhealth.com/