Clover Health, Mass. General, and ACP Decisions Research Team Secures Grant from National Institute of Health for Innovative Approach to Advance Care Planning

• Five-year study will deploy technology to augment medical care for vulnerable patients with life-limiting illnesses
  
• Successful study will provide evidence that video decision aid improves advance care planning and quality of life and reduces health care costs

NASHVILLE, Tenn. and BOSTON , March 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Clover Health Investments, Corp. (Nasdaq: CLOV) (“Clover”), an innovative technology company improving health outcomes for America's seniors, announced it is part of a team that received a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct a clinical study with researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and ACP Decisions, a non-profit foundation focused on advanced care planning. The study focuses on the effectiveness of multimedia tools for improving advance care planning among patients with life-limiting illness receiving home-based primary care.

The number of patients living with serious chronic illness and receiving home-based care through house call providers is increasing. Often, these patients lack exposure to specialty palliative care and receive education and counseling on advance care planning much too late. Healthcare systems are seeking scalable solutions that provide advance care planning services to more patients earlier in their disease course yet are constrained by the scarcity of palliative care clinicians and the lack of clinical programs outside the hospital setting.

The goal of the study is to understand the effectiveness of using video-based advance care planning resources to optimize serious illness medical care for patients with chronic, life-limiting illnesses receiving home-based care. The innovative approach will incorporate predictive analytics and video technology to significantly expand access to advance care planning for a highly vulnerable population of patients.

The team assembled to conduct the study is one of the leading research groups in palliative and serious illness medical care, and this project has the potential to dramatically improve the care of patients in home settings across the country while simultaneously reducing the cost of care. Areej El-Jawahri, an oncologist interested in improving patient decision-making based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, and Angelo Volandes, co-founder of the non-profit ACP Decisions and also faculty at MGH are co-principal investigators. Co-Investigators include: Kumar Dharmarajan, Chief Scientific Officer at Clover Health and Assistant Professor Adjunct at the Yale School of Medicine, who leads Clover’s clinical programs and R&D initiatives for its most medically complex members; and, Aretha Delight Davis, MD, JD, CEO of ACP Decisions, who leads implementation projects for the nonprofit.

“Our goal at Clover is to improve the lives of Medicare beneficiaries. We expect this study will generate pivotal data to help us understand if scalable video technology can meaningfully improve end of life outcomes for the most vulnerable older adults who are rarely part of clinical trials,” said Kumar Dharmarajan.

“This project has the potential to shift the paradigm of care for seriously ill patients by utilizing technology to inform their preferences for care and enhance patient-centered decision-making at the end of life,” said Areej El-Jawahri.

“ACP Decisions’ mission is to empower patients and their families so that they can remain in control of and in the center of their care. We are excited to have the opportunity to implement video decision aids on a large scale,” said Aretha Delight Davis.

The research team will conduct a randomized clinical trial of the video intervention versus normal care in 500 patients with life-limiting illness and a prognosis of one year or less, receiving home-based care. The study will assess the effectiveness of the intervention for patient preferences around medical care, documentation of preferences, and hospice utilization, as well as its ability to drive cost reductions.

The project will be conducted with the support of the Clover Health In-Home Primary Care program, which has the resources, infrastructure, and electronic health record capabilities to ensure the success of this trial. Patients will be recruited from 17 counties in New Jersey with substantial ethnic and racial diversity.

To learn more about the study, visit ClinicalTrials.gov.

About Clover Health
Clover Health is a healthcare technology company with a deeply rooted mission of helping its members live their healthiest lives. Clover uses its proprietary technology platform to collect, structure, and analyze health and behavioral data to improve medical outcomes and lower costs for patients. As a company whose business goals fully align with its members' health needs, Clover works with members and their doctors to become a valued partner. This trust is built by proactively identifying at-risk individuals and teaming up with physicians to accelerate care coordination and simultaneously improve health outcomes and reduce avoidable costs. Clover has offices in San Francisco, Jersey City, Nashville, and Hong Kong. For more information, visit www.CloverHealth.com.

About the Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The Mass General Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with annual research operations of more than $1 billion and comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments. In August 2019, Mass General was named #2 in the U.S. News & World Report list of "America’s Best Hospitals."

About ACP Decisions

ACP Decisions (www.acpdecisions.org) is a non-profit whose mission is to help patients and their families engage in shared decision making with their health care team and to empower them to make informed medical decisions. ACP Decisions uses video support tools to empower patients, families, and healthcare providers so that they can have patient/family-centered and values-based advance care planning conversations.

Media Contact: 

Andrew Still-Baxter
press@cloverhealth.com