Only a 12 months after launching as an organization, Bluebird Youngsters Well being is already asserting plans to double its variety of pediatric clinics from three to 6.
The corporate — which for now, operates solely in Florida — seeks to enhance pediatric care entry in underserved areas by constructing practices in these neighborhoods and accepting all insurance coverage varieties. Practically half of all kids within the U.S. are lined by Medicaid, but lots of their households have a tough time discovering pediatricians who will settle for their insurance coverage — creating troubling pediatric care deserts in lower-income communities.
This downside signifies that households in these communities are sometimes compelled to make use of emergency rooms for his or her routine care wants, which regularly leaves them saddled with hundreds of {dollars} of debt, stated Chris Johnson, Bluebird’s founder and CEO.
“Kids on Medicaid typically have emergency division and hospitalization charges that resemble Medicare sufferers — which is surprising when you think about these are usually wholesome children. This isn’t only a healthcare challenge; it impacts training when kids miss faculty, financial mobility when households can’t work as a consequence of a baby’s well being wants, and general neighborhood wellbeing,” he defined.
Bluebird goals to offer a uniform, high quality expertise for all households — irrespective of the kind of protection they’ve, Johnson famous. The startup’s enterprise mannequin is constructed round value-based care preparations with each Medicaid and business payers.
The corporate’s mannequin additionally integrates behavioral well being into main care with a purpose to deal with a serious hole in pediatric companies, notably for Medicaid sufferers, Johnson added.
Since launching three clinics in Palm Seashore County final 12 months, Bluebird has grown to serve greater than 20,000 sufferers.
Over the course of the summer time, the corporate will probably be opening three new de novo places — two in Jacksonville and one in Broward County. These clinics are deliberately sited in pediatric care deserts the place entry to pediatricians is proscribed for lower-income households, Johnson acknowledged.
“As we seemed for the optimum spot to website these new practices, we basically checked out a metro space and understood the place there simply aren’t sufficient pediatricians to serve all the youngsters that dwell in that neighborhood. These are usually lower-income communities. There’s only a pure evolution that’s occurred within the healthcare system, the place a whole lot of healthcare entry factors are usually in higher-income communities — and that’s occurred over the past 30 to 40 years. We’re making an attempt to counter that by bringing entry to those households and these kids which have struggled to get entry — our doorways are open to everybody,” he declared.
The brand new clinics are additionally situated in high-traffic retail areas, close to public transit and neighborhood facilities, to make them simple to succeed in. They provide prolonged night and weekend hours, on-line and telephone appointment reserving, walk-in availability, and digital and telephonic care choices — all decisions that had been made to spice up accessibility, Johnson defined.
Within the 12 months that Bluebird’s unique three clinics have been working, the corporate is already experiencing a excessive demand for its companies, he added.
“We’re seeing nice demand and traction as a result of we’re finding our clinics in these areas of excessive unmet want. We’re additionally seeing that we’re having a very nice shopper expertise — our father or mother form of Web Promoter Rating is constantly north of 90%. We’re additionally having actually excessive worker satisfaction, so we’re in a position to appeal to and retain prime quality workers,” Johnson remarked.
Kids’s healthcare outcomes are enhancing as effectively, he identified.
He stated that Bluebird’s care mannequin has diminished emergency division visits by greater than 50% and inpatient admissions by almost 70% amongst its sufferers. These outcomes stem primarily from proactive administration of frequent pediatric circumstances like bronchial asthma and anxiousness, Johnson stated.
Earlier this 12 months, the startup raised $31.5 million in Sequence A funding. Within the subsequent couple of years, Bluebird will seemingly increase into new states — equivalent to Georgia, Texas, Virginia and the Carolinas — in response to payer curiosity in its value-based care mannequin, Johnson acknowledged.
Photograph: Steve Debenport, Getty Photographs
