Wellbridge Health, Inc. and the Pittsburgh Business Group on Health (PBGH) have announced their recent relationship focused on a data driven approach to lower health care costs for employers.

PBGH and its members, concerned with rising healthcare costs, have been expanding their attention on chronic disease management, utilization, wellness, and research. PBGH’s goal is to address not only healthcare costs for its members but to also drive positive change in productivity at the employer level related to absenteeism, presenteeism, and work place injury.

Wellbridge Health, Inc., is a Pittsburgh-based disease management company serving individuals diagnosed with chronic diseases such as congestive heart failure, Type 2 diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Following a successful 6-month pilot in 2014-15, Wellbridge Health launched commercially in late 2016 and has served nearly 2,000 individuals in 22 counties in Pennsylvania over a period of 19 months.

Wellbridge Health has developed a new model of chronic disease management that combines simple, daily symptom monitoring technology with weekly (or biweekly, depending on program phase) remote face-to-face video chat. This combined approach, with ~400 touchpoints annually, allows:

• Immediate contact to address symptom escalations; and
• A focus on management of complex and multiple co-morbidities, medication adherence, removal of barriers, nutrition guidance, activity guidance, and health goal-achievement through partnership with master’s trained health coaches specializing in behavior change theory — with the aims of:
  • Accessing the right care at the right time to minimize costs
  • Addressing the reasons for symptom escalation and coaching toward better self-management to improve quality of life and decrease cost of care in the medium- and long-term.

Outcomes, to date, for individuals enrolled in Wellbridge Health’s chronic disease management program have been excellent in all categories – enrollment, adherence, retention, costs, and in clinical outcomes including co-morbidities such as depression.

According to Pamela Greenhouse, Chief Operating Officer of Wellbridge Health, she receives frequent testimonials from the program’s enrollees such as this one received last recently: “It is my desire to participate in this program for as long as I am allowed. I am grateful for you and please allow me to thank you for all of your guidance and support.”  She says, “We are tremendously excited to work with PBGH, an organization with a great mission that is looking to solve chronic disease management for its employer-members and their employees. Through this new relationship, PBGH and Wellbridge Health will help PBGH members by focusing on the 15^% of employees who drive 75% of employer health care costs.”

For more information, please contact Alex Kunz, Business Development Manager at Wellbridge Health at akunz@wellbridgehealth.com, 412-551-5857 or Diane McClune, Vice President at PBGH at diane.mcclune@pbghpa.org, 724-775-1613.