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Black Maternal Health Week, April 11-17, 2024, is an opportunity to raise awareness about specific health challenges and the importance of addressing disparities in care to improve the health of Black mothers and their babies.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, the U.S. has some of the worst maternal and infant health outcomes among high-income countries, and people of color are disproportionally affected. Black Maternal Health week was developed to raise awareness and increase advocacy around this health disparity. That's why we’re committed to addressing maternal health disparities, so everyone has the same opportunity to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby.

Collaborating across the care team

Impacting health inequities requires focused collaboration across the health system. We are collaborating with providers to take a more comprehensive approach to maternity care by examining the total related care a member receives during all phases of prenatal care, through delivery and the postpartum journey, as well as the first months of the baby’s life.

We encourage providers to support preventive and patient-centered experiences by embedding health equity quality measures in their practice and incentivizing the proactive reduction of health disparities.

Managing risks during pregnancy

Research shows that Black women experience serious complications at consistently higher rates than white women, regardless of age or income. To help lower these risks, we are enhancing our Bump2Baby program to build in more equity-centered support and resources for members during and after their pregnancy. This includes:

• Screening members for social risk and connecting them to necessary resources
• Factoring in social risk scores in identifying high-risk pregnancies
• Reaching out to members with high-risk pregnancies to offer care management
• Training our care managers to help members navigate concerns around maternal health inequities and discrimination
• Educational resources for members about maternal health, disparities, warning signs of complications and more.

This program fosters a close partnership between care managers and members to integrate whole-person health while supporting the care you provide.

Addressing postpartum care needs

Quality care is just as critical postpartum. Severe complications can happen during this time, with nearly one-third of maternal deaths occurring one week to one year after childbirth. For many new mothers, this period is a fragile balance of physical and mental recovery from giving birth, while adjusting to parenthood and navigating new dynamics with their baby—such as lactation and sleep.

An analysis of our claims data found that postpartum provider visit rates are low, especially for Black and Hispanic/Latinx members. We encourage you to ensure postpartum visits are scheduled so members receive the support they need when they need it most.

Helping members have the healthiest pregnancy possible

Our members have access to convenient, digital tools to support their maternity journey. Our BridgeSpan Bump2Baby program provides personalized support from nurse care managers.

We have also partnered with Charlie Health to offer virtual maternal mental health services to commercial members on most of our plans.

4/10/2024

We are committed to providing our members access to high-quality care at the lowest price. We continue to educate our members about their care options to ensure that they are receiving the rigt care at the time in a setting that's clinically appropriate and most cost-effective.

We encourage you to remind your patients at every visit about their care options before they need sudden medical care to help them save time and money.

Convenient care options

• In-person care
  • Share your office hours with your patients, especially if you offer extended hours.
  • If your patient does not have a PCP, encourage them to use our Find a Doctor tool or call Customer Service at the phone number on the back of their member ID card for help finding an in-network provider.

• Virtual care

  • If you offer telehealth services, share information with your patients about how they can schedule a virtual appointment with you. Update your provider directory information to indicate whether you offer telehealth services.
  • Our members have access to in-network telehealth vendors and behavioral health providers.

• Urgent care

  • Remind patients to consider urgent care clinics for illnesses and injuries beyond the scope of virtual care, such as migraine; abdominal pain; sprains, strains and cuts; and severe cold and flu symptoms. Many urgent care clinics are conveniently located and more accessible than EDs, allowing members to save time and money.
• ED care
  • Remind patients to go to the ED if they are experiencing acute or life-threatening symptoms, such as chest pain, shortness of breath, signs of a possible stroke, uncontrollable bleeding, severe burns, head injuries (especially loss of consciousness) or seizures.

Resources for members

• Our member FAQ includes information about virtual, in person (including urgent care centers) and emergency care.
• To help our members have a better understanding of their care options, our care advocates contact members who had three or more ED visits in a six-month period or who had one or more avoidable ED visits to provide information about alternative treatment options.

National Healthcare Decisions Day, observed annually on April 16, aims to inspire, educate and empower all of us to share our preferences for medical treatment should an unexpected illness occur. We encourage you to begin or continue advance care planning (ACP) conversations with all your patients as part of the preventive and treatment services you provide.

We reimburse providers who bill for ACP conversations with members, regardless of age or health status.

ACP conversations may include:

• Designating a medical decision-maker
• Discussing current medical status and prognosis
• Discussing important personal elements that often influence treatment choices (e.g., personal values, social, cultural and spiritual beliefs)
• Reviewing, editing or creating documents, such as an advance directive, durable power of attorney or POLST/MOLST form

Learn more about our Personalized Care Support Program.

Serious Illness Messaging Toolkit

Terms like hospice, palliative care and advance care planning can be confusing to patients. The Serious Illness Messaging Toolkit includes tips for how to talk about serious illness using evidence-based research.

Vynca supports members facing serious illness diagnoses

Vynca is a telehealth palliative care provider that focuses on addressing physical, emotional and social impacts of a disease. It’s in-network for BridgeSpan members. Vynca doesn’t replace traditional medical care; its specialists collaborate with a member’s established PCP to offer additional care coordination and support tailored for patients with serious illness. Vynca’s providers are licensed in the state in which the member resides.

Vynca uses telehealth (phone and video) for improved accessibility, and they coordinate closely with each member’s established care team. Its providers focus on empowering those living with a disease and mitigating ongoing symptoms in the comfort of the member’s own home. Depending on a member’s diagnosis, Vynca will coordinate and connect them with a range of palliative care physicians, as well as nursing and social service providers, who know their care plan. Services are available 24 hours a day.

Other resources

• National POLST Paradigm
• The Conversation Project
• Vital Talk

4/8/2024

BridgeSpan is offering a limited number of free Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) memberships for clinicians who work with patients with serious illness. CAPC’s organizational membership is one of the most cost-effective ways to standardize practice and improve care. CAPC tools, training and technical assistance provide your staff who work with patients with serious illness comprehensive resources necessary to perform at the highest level.

The CAPC membership will help you:

• Address gaps in care
• Start strengthening your palliative care program
• Train staff of all specialties and disciplines in communication, pain and symptom management, as well as other key skills

CAPC offers:

• A wide variety of free resources, but members get exclusive access to even more
• Clinical and operational online curriculum with free continuing education credits for all disciplines, including free ABIM Maintenance of Certification (MOC) points for physicians
• Access to webinars with leading experts in the field, and virtual office hours where you can consult with CAPC faculty
• Hundreds of ready-to-use tools, tutorials, case studies and monographs to draw from best practices in palliative care

Get your free CAPC membership by July 1

Join a vibrant network of health care professionals at more than 1,700 organizations that benefit from CAPC membership. Members include health systems, hospitals, hospices, home health agencies, medical groups, health plans and other organizations.

Send us an email with your organization name and the number of staff you would like to enroll by July 1, 2024. If we’re able to accommodate your enrollment request, a registration link will be emailed to you. Memberships are given on a first-come, first-served basis.

Learn more

Review this CAPC booklet: The Case for Improving Communication and Symptom Management Skills.

4/8/2024

As Change Healthcare (CHC) systems begin to reconnect in the wake of a cyber security incident, we are aware that some providers and hospitals that use CHC may still be unable to send claims electronically to insurance companies, including BridgeSpan.

• CHC has begun reconnecting with payers and is providing regular updates, including information about service restoration and their temporary funding assistance program.
• If you need an alternative clearinghouse for electronic claims submissions, we encourage them to use Availity. Availity has prioritized new provider registrations to assist health care organizations affected by this incident. For those who cannot self-serve, please contact Availity through its Lifeline support page.
• There is currently no impact to our pre-authorization process. If you are experiencing challenges because of the CHC outage, you have the option to use our e-auth system on Availity or longstanding practice of accepting faxed requests.

We’ll continue to monitor and assess the situation and will provide updates as they become available.

4/3/2024

We recognize that access to care and its impacts on patient experience are a challenge across the health care industry. We have partnered with Press Ganey Consulting to offer a free webinar series, providing best-in-class insights, tools and techniques to improve patient experience. 1.0-hour continuing education (CE) will be available. The webinar will cover the following topics:

• Redefining access to improve quality and experience
• Providing access throughout the patient journey
• Setting expectations to support access to care for both PCP and specialty care
• Specific interventions that promote access beyond traditional face-to-face appointments
• Applying tactics that can be implemented starting your next day at the office

Join us for a 60-minute webinar on one of the following dates:

• April 5, 2024, noon (PT) Register
• June 7, 2024, noon (PT) Register
• August 2, 2024, noon (PT) Register

We are excited to offer this opportunity and hope you can join.

4/1/2024