NEMS partners with LucidAct Health to Promote Health Outcomes for San Francisco Seniors
SAN FRANCISCO, CA. June 21st, 2021– North East Medical Services (NEMS) and LucidAct Health Inc. have partnered to deliver Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) management to some of San Francisco’s most vulnerable communities. LucidAct’s innovative and linguistically appropriate virtual healthcare will aim to improve patient outcomes for some of NEMS’ limited-English proficient seniors living in San Francisco by making these virtual services available and accessible for seniors to use from the comfort of their homes.
NEMS, a federally qualified health center based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is partnering with LucidAct Health, a leading RPM and virtual visit software company based in Silicon Valley, to improve the health and lives of seniors participating in NEMS’ Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) in San Francisco. NEMS is one of the largest community health centers in the United States targeting the medically underserved Asian population. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area with clinics in San Francisco, Daly City, and San Jose, NEMS offers comprehensive health care services to over 65,000 patients, a majority of whom are uninsured, low-income, and prefer to be served in a language other than English. The NEMS PACE Program launched in the heart of Chinatown in early 2021 and provides comprehensive medical and social services to low-income, eligible seniors of whom a majority are dually eligible for Medicare and Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program). As 90% of their patients identify as Asian, NEMS and NEMS PACE prioritize providing linguistically competent and culturally sensitive health care services.
According to NEMS Chief Strategy Officer, Dr. Jerry Jew, “We believe that a comprehensive care delivery system for our PACE participants is the key to better health equity while ensuring safety and comfort from their home. Through our partnership with LucidAct Health, we can provide the easy-to-use remote care devices with multi-language capability via 4G/5G LTE network.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual care provided a safe alternative to in-person care, yet challenges remain for seniors to access many of these services. These challenges were even greater for people with limited English proficiency. LucidAct’s RPM management provides seamless and easy-to-use virtual care that is tailored to seniors. LucidAct’s multi-language devices can provide services in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, and more languages as needed.
“The care team at NEMS PACE is excited to pilot this innovative technology. Many of our PACE participants face obstacles using virtual care with the current tools available due to advanced and complicated technology that is difficult for seniors to navigate. Our population is further challenged with low-English proficiency. LucidAct removes both of these barriers for us.”, shared the NEMS PACE Program Director Sharon Raver-Villanueva. “I look forward to seeing how LucidAct’s linguistically competent RPM management can help improve our participants’ health and wellbeing while supporting our care team with the clinical data they need to provide optimal care.”
Demand for virtual care and care coordination from home has skyrocketed since the pandemic. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Survey,[1] 51% of the U.S. consumers are concerned about going back to healthcare facilities. Additionally, elderly patients with language and cultural barriers are facing extra challenges. These include lack of access to proper transportation, absence of easy-to-use technologies and care teams that are unable to converse in their native language
“LuicdAct’s AI technology brings real-time intelligent data to our providers,” said NEMS Chief Information Officer, Murali Athuluri. “This is crucial for identifying vital trends and highlighting social determinants of health faster than comparable solutions.”
Through this collaboration, NEMS will leverage LucidAct Health’s virtual care platform to enable remote care monitoring and AI technology to reduce providers’ burdens of reading through massive amounts of patient clinical records and stream of device data. LuicdAct Health will integrate with NEMS’ EMR system and bring AI-driven insights directly to providers via FHIR-based APIs, in turn increasing the quality of care.
“This is a major milestone for LucidAct Health as it enables us to focus on the needs of the growing Medicaid population. The needs of these members are naturally more complex, necessitating a different approach to virtual care and care coordination. We are honored and pleased to be partnering with such a leader in the Medicaid sector.” said Grace Chen, founder and CEO of LucidAct Health Inc.
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ABOUT NEMS
North East Medical Services (NEMS) is one of the largest non-profit community health centers in the United States targeting the medically underserved population of the San Francisco Bay Area. NEMS offers comprehensive health care services to a variety of patients, a majority of whom are low-income, access Medicaid, and are limited English proficient. NEMS providers and staff offer linguistically-competent and culturally-sensitive services in many languages and dialects other than English, including Cantonese, Mandarin, Toishan, Vietnamese, Burmese, Tagalog, Spanish, and Hindi. NEMS operates 12 clinics in San Francisco, Daly City, and San Jose. For more information, please visit www.nems.org.
ABOUT NEMS PACE
North East Medical Services Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (NEMS PACE) launched in San Francisco’s Chinatown in early 2021. PACE is a nationally recognized model of care for older adults with chronic health needs. NEMS PACE provides participants with access to a dedicated care team that works together to develop a comprehensive and personalized care plan to meet each participant’s unique medical, social and emotional needs. For more information, please visit https://www.nems.org/pace/about.html.
ABOUT LUCIDACT HEALTH
LucidAct Health is a cloud-based virtual care API and software company based in Silicon Valley, California. It specializes in designing virtual care and remote monitoring solutions for Medicaid patients, enabling their equitable access to healthcare even when access to technologies is challenging. Its emerging AI technology is focused on surfacing Social Determinants of Health of patients with complex needs, who are usually also most vulnerable. For more information, please visit www.lucidact.com
[1] Dunbrack, L. A. (2020, December). IDC Survey: Prioritizing Safe Access to Care to Address Consumers' COVID-19 Concerns. IDC. https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US46582320.