Three in four seniors have multiple chronic conditions that compound. But infrequent patient encounters, specialty silos and lack of cross-condition care standards make cascades harder to detect and manage. Reimbursement structures further aggravate the problem.
Why the wound? A chronic wound is often the clearest visible signal of a cascade running underneath: CHF, PAD, diabetes, renal decline. We enter where the signal is easiest to catch early. Surgical wounds are a second major entry point into the same cascade.
Figures from public Medicare data and SHP analysis; illustrative and pre-diligence.
One patient strains two P&Ls at once, the health system’s and the payer’s. Neither can directly change the outcome. The wound cascade alone spans ~12M Medicare lives, the doorway to a far larger complex-care population.
25 to 30% of cascade-patient cost is potentially avoidable
But broad value-based care is structurally challenged to fund the intervention. Risk scores and Star ratings erode on top. A total-cost blowout that coding alone won’t fix.
1.8× the Medicare 30-day readmission baseline
These admissions trigger HRRP penalties. Roughly 50% of an ACO’s cost variance traces back to the top 5%. Margin compression on every cascade admission.
At-home, NP-led teams supported by a virtual care hub form our delivery spine. Our science- and evidence-based Accountable Cascade Management care model guides three modes of cascade engagement.
Continuous panel accountability
A plan or ACO delegates a complex panel. We track the signals, intervene early, and coordinate across settings for months or years.
Stabilizing the fastest part of the cascade
At admission, discharge, or acuity shift, we stabilize over 30 to 60 days. Care comes home before avoidable utilization compounds.
The signal inside a routine visit
Inside weekly wound or specialty visits, the platform is designed to surface the CHF, PAD and diabetes signals beneath the wound. No change to anyone’s workflow.
*Modeled projections from publicly available value-based-care program data and SHP internal analysis. Citations on request.
Build the care model once, at the center. Manufacture tailored services for many populations and payers at low marginal cost. Software-like economics, applied to care delivery.
One care model, Accountable Cascade Management, is designed to be configured to manufacture tailored services for each population and payer. The same protocols, workforce, network and platform adapt to each population and service, rather than rebuilding the model each time. Designing them once is the easy part. Manufacturing them repeatedly, economically, and at scale is the hard part. Capability is built once, at the center. The delivery network is designed to carry it to every bedside. The factory standardizes how care is produced. Each care plan stays personal to the patient, addressing every population’s unique gaps. Attribution stays with the PCP or ACO. SHP supplies and scales the service rather than competing for it.
- Input. A complex, cascade-prone population from a health system or any risk-bearing entity. A large pocket of avoidable cost the system can identify but cannot effectively manage.
- Configure. Context Analytics finds the gaps, the causality of decline and the cascade-attributed costs; Service Configuration matches the model to the charter: clinical, workforce, admin and economics.
Output. Measured outcomes and aligned revenue, designed to reach every bedside through the network.
Every new accountable care service makes the next one faster to launch, cheaper to deliver, and smarter at the bedside.
Target operating gainsThree shifts opened the door. Years of operating experience let us walk through it first.
- AI changes the labor equation. Skill uplift and admin automation finally make high-touch complex care scalable.
- At-home dislocation. Reimbursement pressure reset valuations at home-health and mobile provider groups, easing the acquisition path.
- Risk is shifting. New CMS models (V28, HHVBP, TEAM) are moving complex-care risk onto plans, ACOs and hospitals faster than their tools can manage. That creates demand for an operator who can take it on.
The dislocation is temporary. As rates stabilize and capital returns, the window to acquire the network narrows.
Decades of execution experience with this population, across payer, post-acute, and provider.
- Payer operating experience, and 40+ payer customers served
- Scaled a fully digitized mobile provider group to 5 states
- Built the largest U.S. wound-care platform by EBITDA
- Designed and deployed the largest post-acute clinical wound-care program
- 160 peer-reviewed publications
- Three companies built to market leadership, two exits across healthcare services and SaaS