Founded in 2006 by philanthropists Gary and Mary West, West Health comprises the Gary and Mary West Foundation, the West Health Institute and the West Health Policy Center. West Health exists with a mission to “lower healthcare costs to enable seniors to successfully age in place with access to high-quality, affordable health and support services that preserve and support their dignity, quality of life, and independence.” Through strategic partnerships, West Health works in concert to help all Americans age successfully.
For the last decade, West Health Institute and Policy Center have been engaged in advancing value-based care payment and care delivery through collaborations across sectors and care settings to drive innovative solutions that improve care for older adults. More specifically, the Institute’s value-based care team has focused on working with health systems to find ways to lower healthcare costs, while simultaneously allowing seniors to age in place for as long as possible.
“Most of that work has been helping systems develop the capability of caring for more older adults at home,” said Amy Stuck, PhD, RN, senior director for value-based care at West Health Institute. “Most people now are more familiar with [programs like] hospital at home. We helped organizations build out the continuum of home-based care strategies to achieve the mission of high-quality care at lower cost.”
In 2023, West Health Institute led an effort to connect value-based care organizations (VBCOs) and accredited geriatric emergency departments (GEDs) to develop new pathways that direct seniors visiting the emergency department (ED) to VBCO resources that better match their needs and wishes, and avoid default admissions.
To demonstrate the efficacy of these care pathways, the Institute launched the Learning and Action Network — a pilot program that initially included three healthcare systems. After the successful completion of the pilot, the team engaged in year-long collaborations with three additional participants, working with the Institute for Accountable Care to identify and add new ideal partners. The power of these collaborations came from forging new connections — linking health systems with accountable care organizations (ACOs) and clinically integrated networks with GEDs in the same catchment area.
“What’s significant is these are two entities that, but for West Health, probably would never have talked to each other,” Stuck said. “Value-based care organizations are trying to keep their patients out of the ED, and emergency clinicians are extremely busy and do not have knowledge of or easy access to the additional resources of a VBCO. These are just two groups that aren’t naturally crossing paths or working together on solutions that address each entity’s challenges.”
Partnerships between VBCOs and GEDs can lead to lower healthcare costs through avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions, while simultaneously reducing ED wait times and boarding.
“In these partnerships, physicians in the ED understand that when an ACO beneficiary comes in, that patient might have additional resources available to them – whether that means there is an opportunity to get them discharged home more quickly or that the ACO offers home based acute care services or next-day specialist visits,” added Claire Andrews, program manager and gerontologist for West Health Institute.
Through the Learning and Action Network, 632 hospital admissions were averted and an estimated $9 million in gross healthcare costs were saved as of February 2025. To share this success with more healthcare systems, West Health Institute recently released its Forging Aligned Partnerships Between Value-Based Care Organizations and GEDs Toolkit, which provides a wealth of resources for VBCOs and GEDs looking to pursue similar partnerships.
The toolkit has two different versions – one for the VBCO audience and one for GEDs – and includes a database from the Institute for Accountable Care, as well as sample meeting agendas and business case templates.
Emergency clinicians who are looking to achieve successful care connections with VBCOs will have everything they need to make the case for investing in these relationships and can also utilize the accompanying blog for more information and tools.
“The dream is that both organizations recognize the value that they add to each other and to the patient,” Andrews said.