Benzinga | Mar 4, 2021 04:07PM EST

Clover Health Reports Is Part Of Team That Received 5-Year Grant From National Institutes Of Health To Conduct Clinical Study With Researchers From Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard, ACP Decisions, No Terms Disclosed

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.