AllWays Health Partners leverages digital technology in collaboration with Mass General Brigham

Learn how AllWays Health Partners leverages digital technology and collaboration within the Mass General Brigham enterprise to create innovative solutions that support members’ needs.

How does AllWays Health Partners think about digital health solutions?

One example that demonstrates the value of integration of Mass General Brigham and AllWays Health Partners is the launch of Allies^SM, an HMO product purpose-built with the team at Newton-Wellesley Hospital (NWH). The Allies product showcases our lead role from a strategic and development standpoint that we have put in place for digital enablement, transformation, and thinking. Allies is not your standard insurance product; it is a differentiated and highly purposeful macro-experience centered around NWH. Allies relies on a digital workflow with the help of dedicated Allies Health Navigators and several virtual care offerings.

As an Allies member, you need to select a primary care provider (PCP) at NWH; this is the center of the member relationship and aims to offer patients quicker appointment times. When working with the team at NWH, it was clear that the concept of dedicated, personal navigation was essential when bringing this new product to the market.

This is an example of how important it is to leverage digital tools and technology to make these concepts come to fruition—and scale them. It’s a new approach to product development with a hospital—leveraging the distinct attributes that the PCP and specialist community can bring right from the start as a core part of the product experience.

Can you talk about other areas of digital health with the opportunity to collaborate across the system?

One of the areas we can leverage digital in a broad way is addressing some acute shortages in provider and clinician behavioral health. Looking through a system-wide view encourages us to look at the virtual tools we can use to augment the patient needs for behavioral and mental health services exacerbated by the pandemic. The concept of a virtual network has accelerated our thought process about leveraging those in the future, as those needs have grown in the last 18-24 months. A number of us throughout the organization are looking at new levers we may not have used historically and seeing where we can use those to address this current and on-going need.

Has the investment in technology supported individuals with disabilities—specifically with increased access to care that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible?

Yes. One program that comes to mind is the Down Syndrome Clinic to You or DSC2U. This program, designed by Mass General Hospital (MGH) and Mass General Hospital for Children (MGHfC), was recently enhanced with increased access to members of AllWays Health Partners. It is a virtual-enabled community of national Down syndrome experts and series of offerings to support families or caregivers in taking care of individuals with Down syndrome.

This is an excellent illustration of broadening care to a specific population, some of whom would have typically traveled 90 -120 minutes to a physical location to get services dependent on their spectrum of needs. Collaboration with both MGH and MGHfC allowed us to make a significant offering digitally enabled and available to more people who need these services.

To learn more about the DSC2U, read our press release.