Making a Healthy Difference Through Partnerships with Federally Qualified Health Centers
Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) are community-based healthcare providers that receive funding to offer primary-care services in low-income and underserved communities.
On May 18th, 2022, Yuvo Health announced a partnership with four FQHCs. This partnership will enable them to expand these FQHCs reach to even more individuals. Cesar Herrera, CEO & Co-Founder of Yuvo Health, spoke with I Don’t Care host Kevin Stevenson about this exciting opportunity.
As Herrera explained, Yuvo Health provides administrative and technology wrap-around services to support federally qualified health centers to enable their transition to value-based care. Rural and hyper-urban areas are two concentrations where FQHCs play a vital role in supporting the communities.
Yuvo Health’s mission is personal as well as professional. Herrera was an FQHC patient growing up. His first-hand experience of the importance these centers provide to the community gave him an understanding of what happens to a society that doesn’t have equitable access to primary healthcare.
In NYC, where Yuvo Health is based, most private practice doctors don’t accept any insurance. This exclusivity closes the door to many patients who cannot afford private care and magnifies the problem in underserved communities where options are limited. That’s why Yuvo’s announcement is welcome news.
“We’ve brought on our first set of FQHC partners with our model launched in downstate NY,” Herrera said. “What Yuvo is, is an IPA and an MSO model. It enables us to establish value-based contracts on behalf of our FQHC partners with managed care entities, and in many cases, these are contracts that our FQHC partners would not be able to establish on their own.”
These first four FQHC partners represent a diverse set of the patient population representing the five boroughs of NYC and Long Island, and roughly 40,000 Medicaid lives flowing through their centers every year.