Sage Health of Nashville, Tennessee, is investing $25 million to improve health care for seniors by opening three health centers in central Arkansas.
It recently opened centers in North Little Rock and Little Rock, and its Bryant location is set to open Nov. 29.
Sage offers patients with a Medicare Advantage plan a multidisciplinary primary care team and a coordinator who arranges everything from scheduling appointments to offering rides to providers’ offices.
“It is a concierge practice without the concierge fees,” Sage Health CEO John Haskell, told Arkansas Business.
Each center can handle diagnostics and treatments for chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke and Alzheimer’s disease.
The centers, which are about 10,000 SF, also feature activity rooms and areas for social activities, fitness and nutrition programs, and mental health services.
Sage Health providers focus on the root causes of patients’ chronic conditions and disease and work in concert to solve problems, instead of passing them off to a specialist and to the hospital, Haskell said.
“We really want to take full accountability for patient outcomes, but even beyond that, we’re also working to help patients navigate their health challenges affordably,” he said. “Seniors really need more care than younger populations, and they need more recurring, intensive primary care. So we are creating a new asset to the community that doesn’t exist today.”
Medicare will pay Sage Health per member, per month for a patient, instead of paying for each service. Haskell said the budget amount depends on each patient, but it’s generally about $1,000.
The fee-for-service model isn’t health care, but “sick care,” he said. “So our alignment is to keep people healthy, and keep them out of the hospital.”
While most family practice doctors have about 1,500 patients, doctors at Sage Health will be limited to 400, allowing them more time to spend with patients, said Dr. Mark Malloy, Arkansas market medical director.
Each center will have the capacity of 2,000 patients, but reaching that level may take some time, Haskell said.
“We’re investing $25 million into Little Rock among these three centers,” he said. “Most of it is not real estate. Most of it is actually the losses that we incur getting to some level of profitability.”
Each center can accommodate up to six care teams, which include a primary care physician. A center will have about 15 employees when it opens and about 35 when it reaches capacity.
Founded in 2022, Sage Health has 11 centers, including in Alabama, Maryland and Mississippi. Haskell said it wants to be in markets with a “sizable underserved senior population.”
Its first clinic opened in May, and the company has seen a reduction in the hospital stays from its patients. “I don’t want to overstate our outcomes yet, because it’s early,” Haskell said. Sage Health expects to reduce inpatient admissions by 30% to 40%, he said.
Sage Health intends to open additional locations in Arkansas, but no new centers are planned until 2025. “This is really our first level of commitment to Arkansas,” Haskell said.
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