In 2018, we formed SOMOS Innovation to empower physicians to deliver high-quality, holistic care to underserved populations, with a focus on lowering cost, reducing administrative burden, and improving the patient experience.
Our Heritage in Community-Based Care
Inspired by a policy reform initiative implemented by the NYS Department of Health, SOMOS originated as a Performing Provider System called SOMOS Community Care, participating in a five-year Medicaid redesign program called DSRIP that successfully reduced avoidable hospital use by twenty-five percent.
Our belief in the tremendous value of the physician-patient relationship is at the core of our business. The ability of primary care physicians to influence patient behavior gives them a unique opportunity to be agents of change in the communities they serve. We believe that this is the most important driver of a necessary transformation of healthcare for the people of New York.
From the outset, SOMOS providers have lived and practiced in the communities they serve, amplifying their impact. We understand that culture is more than language and have been ready to meet the social, cultural, and linguistic needs of NYC’s diverse residents. And because SOMOS encompasses such a large swath of neighborhood providers, we represent a sizable patient population, most of whom are part of NYC’s Asian and Latino communities.
Entering the New Era of Value-Based Care
In this next phase of our evolution in value-based care, we’ve united over 1,000 physicians from three longstanding provider networks in NYC to form the SOMOS Independent Physician Association (IPA), currently caring for 540,000 members and counting. The other arm of SOMOS Innovation, SOMOS Your Health, LLC, performs health plan functions delegated to us by the various MCOs with which we contract to fully support our Medicaid transformation initiatives.
SOMOS Innovation builds upon the lessons learned during five years of DSRIP. The knowledge, experience, and infrastructure we developed—from partnerships with community-based organizations to address social determinants of health, to investments in electronic health record implementation—are at the core of our new platform.
Through a combination of technology, enduring partnerships with culturally sensitive, community-based physicians, and a care model that considers the whole person, SOMOS is poised to improve the patient experience while also helping doctors prepare for the transition to value-based reimbursement.