Papa Rolls Out ‘Papa Plus’ to Help Insurers Support Socially Isolated Members

Papa, a company focused on elder care services, is introducing a new initiative that expands on its established companion care model to help health insurers improve quality performance.

The program, called Papa Plus, enables the company’s network of screened companions (known as “Pals”) to perform additional support services for health plans beyond addressing members’ social needs. These services may involve helping members arrange important wellness visits and accompanying them to appointments, offering assistance following a hospital discharge or guiding patients through telehealth consultations.

Through these interactions, Papa said the program creates a direct line of engagement with some of the most vulnerable and hardest-to-reach patients. 

Austin Weaver, SVP for healthcare strategy at Papa, said in an interview that the platform builds on nearly ten years of experience collaborating with insurers.

Population health management has become increasingly critical for payers in recent years, particularly in Medicare Advantage. Weaver said Papa’s partners had frequently asked whether the company’s companionship model could be used to support other healthcare functions.

According to the announcement, Papa Plus consolidates that operational experience into a single platform that insurers can scale across their member populations.

He said the company is applying multiple components – including care pathway design, decision-support tools, technology enhancements and guaranteed results – when rolling out Papa Plus as part of a wider in-home companionship and support benefit.

Papa said that health plans participating in Medicare Advantage (MA) are increasingly under pressure to reach members who are difficult to engage, as doing so plays an important role in determining performance under the program’s star ratings system. Services that may once have been viewed simply as an added in-home benefit can now function as an essential component of care management.

When patients disengage from their healthcare, they may experience poorer outcomes, struggle to manage chronic conditions and fail to take medications as prescribed. All of these issues can ultimately affect a plan’s star ratings.

Weaver explained that engaging these members often comes down to solving the “last mile” challenge in care delivery. In-person interactions, he said, can be the turning point for patients who are otherwise difficult to reach.

Weaver added that one national health plan partner has described Papa’s approach as an ability to connect with individuals who are typically considered unreachable. He pointed to one example involving a health plan whose thousands of members had not completed health risk assessments, an important requirement for Medicare Advantage performance metrics. According to Weaver, Papa’s network of companions was able to connect with many of those individuals, helping the plan improve its star ratings performance.

During the outreach effort, the company also uncovered significant insights about this previously disengaged group of patients. More than 20% reported experiencing a fall within the previous month, while over one-third said they were suffering from severe loneliness. Roughly a third had also recently been hospitalized or had visited an emergency department. Weaver noted that this  information can guide future collaboration with the insurer.

Introduction to Papa Plus

Healthcare support platform Papa has introduced Papa Plus, a new program designed to help insurers better reach and support socially isolated members. The Papa Plus initiative builds on Papa’s established companion care services and aims to improve health outcomes by addressing social needs such as loneliness, transportation barriers, and limited access to care.

With Papa Plus, insurers can leverage the company’s nationwide network of trained companions—known as Papa Pals—to provide personalized assistance and connect vulnerable members with essential healthcare services.

How Papa Plus Supports Members

The Papa Plus program allows insurers to engage members more effectively through in-home and community-based support. Through Papa Plus, Papa Pals can assist members with tasks such as scheduling wellness visits, accompanying them to medical appointments, and helping them navigate telehealth services.