Guideway Care Signs National Agreement with Vizient, Inc. for Care Guidance Services

The agreement will provide Vizient’s diverse member base contracted pricing for leading technology-enabled, comprehensive care guidance

Birmingham, AL (July 20, 2021): Guideway Care (Guideway), a leader in technology-enabled care guidance services that extend beyond mere navigation, announced the launch of a multi-year agreement with Vizient, Inc. (Vizient). Vizient is the largest member-driven performance improvement company in the country, whose membership represents more than $110 billion in annual purchasing volume. Vizient members now have contracted pricing for Guideway’s structured workflows and tech-enabled, peer-to-patient solutions that help ensure optimal patient compliance, motivation and satisfaction.

“Through this agreement, we bring Guideway’s proven capabilities in reducing penalties, improving net revenues, increasing patient satisfaction, reducing negative leakage, and freeing nursing capacity at increased savings to Vizient members,” said Craig Parker, Chief Executive Officer for Guideway. “With rising performance pressures, higher barriers to care, and nursing and staff shortages, addressing the practical barriers faced by patients across the care journey has become more critical. We offer a proven path to solving non-clinical factors—like transportation, isolation, food insecurity, financial pressures, anxiety and confusion and health literacy—that impact patient accountability and action. As a result, we quickly reduce readmissions, lower avoidable utilization, manage complex patients outside of a clinical setting, and free nursing staff to work at the top of their licensure.”

Guideway’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ed Partridge, director emeritus of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham said, “I’ve been working to reduce the impact of healthcare disparities and the obstacles embedded in the social determinants of health for over 30 years. Guideway represents the culmination of all of this experience and the logical progression of work that we have published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). We are excited to work through Vizient to bring these practical solutions to its membership across the country.” With alternative payment models (APM) proliferating, Guideway offers Vizient members new and faster ways to address the non-clinical factors that dramatically impact APM performance.

Guideway’s solutions adapt to diverse patient pathways by addressing the gaps experienced by patients between provider visits. Patients are often non-compliant with prescribed care paths because of practical, social, and emotional factors that can be resolved by non-clinical Care Guides. Through a combination of disease-aligned protocols, appropriately skilled resources, and an intelligent care guidance platform that includes response algorithms and analytics, Guideway’s Care Guides solve for practical barriers to improve patient compliance, improve outcomes, and reduce non-clinical demands on nursing staff.

“We can deliver a faster path to the realization of financial and quality outcomes for Vizient’s diverse member base,” said Zoe McMillen, strategic business development specialist for Guideway Care. “With a history of 3-8x return on investment, we can quickly drive to revenue and quality goals while serving as a force multiplier for overworked and overstretched nursing staff.”

Under the agreement, Vizient members have access to contracted pricing for Guideway’s readmissions, chronic disease management, cancer care, ED utilization, bundle optimization, and self-insured population management solutions for enhanced savings.

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About Guideway Care

Guideway Care works with hospitals and health systems, specialty provider practices, and health plans to support patients from initial interest (lead generation and conversion) through their entire care journey (planning, pre-procedure, and post-discharge). Guideway’s people, processes and technology help achieve better outcomes, improve patient satisfaction, and reduce the costs of providing outstanding care. At the core of Guideway’s solution is a fusion of advanced software and trained Care Guides. We drive patient and prospect interaction to improve communication, increase patient ability and motivation, and build patient retention by combining technology and people to create deep patient-to-peer relationships. Our process illuminates obstacles which we then resolve with our conversion-focused contact and patient advocate center and other tools like interactive education and activation. Once on a care pathway, our team and technology fill gaps in care to drive compliance, better patient communication, and patient satisfaction. We deliver the lowest total cost of performance for clinical teams, marketing teams, administration, and operations by focusing on non-clinical aspects that impact patient accountability and action. Our smart technology solutions and proven protocols ensure a superior total experience for patients, families, and care providers. In addition to the ways our Care Guides use our conversion success software to help change patient behavior while meeting their needs for information, direction and guidance, Guideway is helping providers and plans meet the challenges of a variety of Alternative Payment Models, including the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced (BPCI+) Initiative, the Radiation Oncology Model, Oncology Care First and the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP).