Scan group Announced on Tuesday It is launching a new medical group dedicated to providing virtual and family primary care for Medicare Advantage members, many of whom will underwrite in their own health plan subsidiaries.

SCAN, headquartered in Long Beach, California, said the new company will be called Welcome Health and its holding company includes Medicare Advantage plan SCAN Health Plan. SCAN Group, which will become the majority shareholder of Welcome, said the for-profit provider will provide affordable care to members of SCAN Health Plan and other Medicare Advantage plans.

Dr. Scott Weingarten recently joined SCAN Health Plan after several decades at Cedars-Sinai, and he will serve as the CEO of the new supplier. He said that SCAN realized through the focus group with members and market research that it needed an elderly-centric provider focusing on home and virtual visits.

Weingarten said: “We found that a significant percentage of elderly people do not seek care because it is difficult for them to enter the doctor’s office.”

He said these challenges include transportation, unwillingness to seek help from adult children, and mobility or incontinence issues.

Fearing about contracting the coronavirus, Weingarten’s mother refused to go to the clinic during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I couldn’t find a doctor who was willing to visit her at her house,” he said.

Welcome clinicians will have experience in providing care for the elderly, including addressing common features of elderly care such as dementia, falls, weakness, multiple medications, and loneliness.

The clinic employs three full-time doctors—two geriatricians and an internist—and there will also be nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, pharmacists, and community health workers. Dr. Deena Goldwater will serve as Welcome’s Vice President of Nursing Services and Chief Scientific Officer. Goldwater joined Welcome from Greater Los Angeles, Virginia, and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where Goldwater served as an assistant clinical professor of cardiovascular and geriatric medicine.

Welcome will begin receiving patients in March 2022. In addition to home and virtual care, it will initially have a physical clinic and then expand from there, as focus groups show that some elderly people still prefer in-person care.

Welcome has joined the fast-growing list of vendors focused on the Medicare Advantage market.Number of medical clinics for the elderly with chronic diseases Rapid development in recent years, Including operators such as ChenMed, Oak Street Health, and Partners in Primary Care.

This type of arrangement usually involves the provider taking full financial risk for Medicare Advantage member care in exchange for a fixed monthly payment based on the patient’s health status.

The privatized form of medical insurance costs more than traditional fee-for-service medical insurance, and a recent study by the Federal Fund found that medical insurance has advantages Will not reduce the frequency of hospital and emergency department visits Compared with traditional medical insurance registration. The researchers also pointed out that people who participated in the two projects had similar rates of chronic diseases.

Weingarten declined to say how many patients it expects Welcome to see, but he said the company has developed a five-year forecast based on comparable providers that focus on Medicare Advantage such as Oak Street Health, Iora Health and CareMax.

Welcome would prefer Align Medical with Bright and healthy, Medicare Advantage plans also hire providers. SCAN Health Plan is a Medicare Advantage plan with 220,000 members in California, Arizona, and Nevada. Weingarten said the plan will serve as Welcome’s “main customer”, but plan members can still choose where they get care.

“If Welcome Health provides better care at an affordable cost and a better experience, some SCAN members will choose Welcome Health,” he said. “If we don’t, then SCAN members will choose from a list of many other medical groups and (independent practice associations) in the communities we serve.”