DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge through the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) area, Genesis Physicians Group has launched a new program to improve care delivery for one of the community’s most vulnerable and underserved populations.

Genesis has entered into a new, value-based contract arrangement with Amerigroup Texas to advance patient-centered care for more than 20,000 Medicaid members in the DFW area who are connected to Genesis primary care physicians. This agreement has enabled Genesis to obtain advance payment to create a team of social workers and community health workers who work with physician practices to address social determinants of health.

Independent physicians care for thousands of vulnerable Medicaid patients each year. “That is why I am particularly excited that Genesis partnered with Amerigroup, and has been empowered to extend additional supports to address life barriers that impact overall health. Our team of patient advocates will serve as extensions of the primary care physician’s office, connecting struggling patients with community-based resources and social support,” says Dr. Jim Walton, Genesis CEO.

“The medical community has recognized that social determinants of health, like social circumstances and behavioral patterns, are often the true drivers of poor health outcomes. Without addressing social issues, it is often impossible to make much progress on a patient’s health,” adds Dr. Chris Berry, Genesis’ Medicaid Medical Director.

The new partnership between Genesis and Amerigroup Texas brings a highly collaborative and innovative approach to managing Medicaid membership. It is a first of its kind in North Texas and allows traditional health care to be supplemented with community health workers and resources to manage social determinants of health. It creates greater opportunity to increase equity in care quality, improve health outcomes and address cost of care for Amerigroup Texas members and vulnerable Texans.

In addition, Genesis has also partnered with ClosedLoop.ai, giving Genesis physicians access to ClosedLoop.ai’s leading-edge artificial intelligence (AI) platform and tools. These resources help Genesis physicians and their virtual teams identify at-risk patients more accurately and efficiently. For example, ClosedLoop and Genesis recently analyzed data representing 1,700+ adult Medicaid patients covered by the Amerigroup contract. The AI-predictive model generated a list of patients who were at a higher-than-average risk of COVID complications. Community health workers reached out with COVID-related education and connected patients back to their physicians for closer management of chronic illnesses.

Since 2017, more than 220 Genesis primary care physicians have transformed their practices to implement successful population health management strategies for more than 65,000 patients. These patients represent only a fraction of the total population of patients cared for by these physicians, but they illustrate the innovative new financing model of value-based shared risk contracts which offer incentives for transforming health care delivery in North Texas.

Today, Genesis works with a dozen health plans representing Medicare, employer-based commercial payers, and now Medicaid, to help independent physicians succeed in the private practice of medicine. Amerigroup Texas is one of the state’s largest health plans, serving more than 850,000 Medicaid and Medicare program participants throughout the state, so this new partnership holds great potential to move the needle on improving lives and redefining what’s possible in health care.

About Genesis Physicians Group

Based in Dallas, Texas, Genesis Physicians Group is an Independent Physician Association founded in 1986, providing a wide range of services to approximately 1,500 physician members and over 200 Advanced Practice Providers. Through Genesis, members receive services, tools, and information to support their practices such as contracting, credentialing, group purchasing, education, population health management, practice consulting, and more. Genesis recently established a robust network of physicians committed to population health management and value-based contracting/ACO. Since its founding, Genesis has continued to evolve and innovate in a rapidly changing healthcare environment, to best meet the needs of its members. www.genesisdocs.org.

About ClosedLoop

ClosedLoop is Healthcare’s Data Science Platform. We make it easy and affordable for healthcare organizations to use data science to improve quality and reduce costs. The ClosedLoop platform is purpose-built to make healthcare-focused data scientists more effective at their jobs. By providing off-the-shelf models for common healthcare use cases and automating many of the manual processes involved in traditional data science tasks, ClosedLoop allows data scientists to focus on the impactful problems that drive real value for organizations. A finalist in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’s AI Health Outcomes Challenge, ClosedLoop is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit https://closedloop.ai/