On Monday, VitellaCare, managed by Crossover Health and located on the third floor of the new Trinity Hospital, held an open house for invited guests prior to welcoming its first patients on Friday. A community open house and ribbon cutting will be scheduled next spring.

Key features of VitellaCare are its wraparound approach by a team of providers, care navigators to guide a patient through the care process and seamless integration with outside specialists.

According to Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, which has partnered with Crossover to provide VitellaCare to its members, the new clinic will have a role in addressing the shortage of primary care in northwestern North Dakota.

“It’s hard to be able to address your health issues, even if you’re super motivated, just because of access. And so, our goal is to try to make that a little bit easier,” said Dr. Stephen Ezeji-Okoye, chief medical officer for Crossover Health.

Jill Schramm/MDN Lacey Bergh, senior vice president of Health Delivery at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, and Dr. Stephen Ezeji-Okoye, chief medical officer for Crossover Health, stand in a counseling room in the VitellaCare center, which will offer primary care services, including behavioral health.

The Minot clinic is the first set up by Crossover to provide access based on insurance carrier. California-based Crossover, with clinics nationwide, typically partners with large employers to offer health care at work sites.

“There’s been a lot of evolution in primary care, but we felt like Crossover just really brings it all together,” said Lacey Bergh, senior vice president of Health Delivery at BCBSND. “As Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, we’re really interested in making sure that there’s access to care – and thinking about how do you simplify health care for folks? How do you have them have a better experience so that health care doesn’t feel so daunting. So, we really love the pieces of this model with the care guides and different pieces to really help you through that process.”

VitellaCare also gives providers more time to spend with patients, allowing them to look at the whole person, she said.

Nurse Practitioner Heidi Peterson will be providing care for VitellaCare in Minot, along with behavioral health specialists and support staff. Beyond the patient exam room, the clinic at Trinity includes comfortable, sound-proof rooms for behavioral health consultations. VitellaCare expects to expand its care team over time.

Patients will be able to contact providers through messaging, but care navigators also can assist with questions relating to obtaining care. Care navigators assist patients when necessary to transition to a specialist, facilitating all the appointments and tests, Ezeji-Okoye said.

“Sometimes care can be really confusing, and part of the goal is to really make care not just accessible but actually make it simple,” he said. “Our goal really is to lower that barrier – being able to get to know your provider and being able to get your issues answered. If you want to do it with a synchronous video visit, in-person visit or by messaging, all of those are great. We’re just going to make sure that the method that’s chosen fits with the problem or the issues at hand.”

Bergh said another goal of BCBSND is to learn from VitellaCare’s health care model and share that knowledge with the rest of the providers in the state.

In offering space in its new facility and creating access to specialists, Trinity has been a welcoming partner for VitellaCare, Bergh said.

“The goal isn’t to create a whole bunch of duplicative care in the region. It’s really, ‘How do we fill in where we need more?’ And so, we want to work really closely with them to make sure that we’re utilizing all of the care options in the community as best that we can,” she said.

“One thing I’ve so appreciated about Crossover is their desire to partner with other providers in the state,” she added. “We have so many health care needs in the state, and we all have to really partner to be able to manage that.”

“Health care is really about relationships, particularly primary care,” Ezeji-Okoye said. “That’s one of the things that’s been so exciting about coming here, both with Blue Cross Blue Shield and with Trinity, is that there’s this real feeling of having to partner together to improve the health of the community. As a primary care-based company, that’s really sort of music to our ears, because we realize we can do a lot but we can’t do it all, and we’re much more successful when we can actually partner closely with those specialists in the community.”

Bergh said any BCBSND member looking for a primary care provider is welcome to contact VitellaCare to make an appointment. They must be fully insured subscribers or be part of a self-insured group that has opted into the program with BCBSND.

“We really want to make it easy for people to get preventive, proactive health care,” Bergh said. “We want to keep people healthy, so reducing barriers for them to be able to get in, have those services done, we feel like it’s just the best thing for their health overall.”