“We’re proud to expand our long-standing collaboration with HealthTrust, a valuable business associate aligned to our mission,” Tortorella said at the time. From the get-go, she had to wrangle with worsening labor and supply chain woes at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.Īmong the initiatives she spearheaded was an expanded partnership with the group purchasing and performance improvement company HealthTrust to ease supply chain pressures. Tortorella ascended to Steward’s c-suite in November 2020 after more than a decade with the company. This would likely serve her well in an industry in which workforce pressures are the prevailing headwind. Experience managing major industry challengesĪs COO of Steward Health, labor management was a key part of Tortorella’s job. Steward’s suite of technology also includes a CARE platform designed to predict mortality among its patients, a tool similar to those that hospices increasingly use to identify patients in need. The systems are designed to streamline credentialing and privileging for clinicians, as well as improve regulatory compliance and workflows, according to an announcement from Steward. Steward in March rolled out a partnership with the health care operations technology and services company RlDatix that put its software products in 39 of the health system’s hospitals. “We’re in some exploratory phases with Christiana Care on how we create this better continuum across the board.”

“We actually had an expansion of the hospital-at-home activity with last year,” former AccentCare CEO Rodgers told Hospice News in January. That experience could be useful to AccentCare as it builds out new hospital-at-home services. Steward also operates unique telehealth models, including a virtual intensive care unit program. This included the addition of predictive analytics solutions. The implementation of new technologies was a key part of Tortorella’s job as COO of Steward, according to a press release and her bio on the company’s website. Quality and financial data have become paramount in contract negotiations with payers and, increasingly, referral partners and systems like predictive analytics and artificial intelligence have proliferated among hospices as they try to reach patients further upstream. For the younger generation, using data for analysis and making business decisions will be the norm.” “But with value-based reimbursement models that are being proposed, we’re going to need to look at a whole new aspect of data management, data collection and data analysis. “The existing structure for hospice and the per diem payments have been around pretty long,” Hunt said. Largely driven by the industry’s move towards value-based care, the next generation of hospice leaders will need to be well-versed in emerging technologies and data management, Susan Hunt, board chair for North Hawaii Hospice, told Hospice News earlier this year. The company remains Steward’s exclusive provider of value-based management services for its Medicare business. The transaction helped make CareMax one of the largest independent senior-focused value-based care platforms in the United States, with a presence in Medicare Advantage, MSSP and the Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access and Community Health (ACO REACH) model. As of the transaction’s closing, Steward’s equity holders owned 41% of CareMax’s common stock. Steward also developed a value-based care and chronic disease management platform that it sold to CareMax (NASDAQ: CMAX) last year for $25 million in cash and 23.5 million CareMax shares. “It demonstrates how the industry can successfully shift toward a more cost-effective, local, and coordinated approach that puts patients first.”

“Our physician-driven, accountable care model focused on keeping patients healthy is completely transforming the health care industry,” Steward CEO and Chairman Ralph De La Torre said in a statement.

The health system reportedly generated more than $68 million in cost savings for Medicare that year. The company also operates a large ACO that in 2020 received the second highest payout among 513 participants in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), according to CMS. All told, the company covers close to 1.5 million full-risk beneficiaries through its managed care and health insurance services. Steward Health Care, an integrated health system, has extensive relationships with commercial, Medicare Advantage and risk-based Medicaid organizations across every state in its footprint.

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