The Southern Texas Physicians Alliance (STPA) in the lower Rio Grande Valley is working to improve communications between medical groups and social service agencies to better meet the needs of its patient population, which has among the highest rates of poverty and unemployment in the state.
One of the counties in its region, Willacy County, has the highest poverty rate in the state of Texas with 38 percent of the residents living in poverty. It also has the second highest child poverty rate at 45.9 percent. And its unemployment rate is at 13 percent.
The region’s high poverty rate contributes to a lack of financial resources for medication, food, reliable transportation and access to specialty care, said Sheila Magoon, M.D., director of STPA, which has approximately 100 physicians.
With a goal of eliminating the fax machine from its operations, last year STPA began working with a company called LeadingReach that offers a tech platform that helps organizations manage transitions of care, including referrals between primary care and specialist offices as well as referrals to social service agencies. Its web-based platform offers clinical workflow management tools, secure team-based chat, and clinical document exchange.
The referral-to-appointment ratio (RTA) is the most important metric in healthcare that no one is talking about, until now. What is RTA? It is the “conversion rate” on a transition of care. Said another way, it is whether or not the patient received the care they need, be it a traditional referral to a specialist, an order for ancillary services, or a surgical procedure. Every other industry scrutinizes, manages, and ultimately owns conversion metrics across their entire business — at least the most successful ones do. Familiar names like Amazon, Facebook and Salesforce can tell you their respective “close rates” across all of their various channels and go-to-market strategies, in real time.
In this second part of a two-part article series, Curtis Gattis, CEO and co-founder of LeadingReach, discusses how healthcare organizations participating in risk-based contracting or value-based financial and care delivery models are currently facing major challenges with integrating, managing and tracking care coordination and communication capabilities within provider networks.
In the first part, we discussed four ways that value-based care can achieve seamless coordination and communication. Now we’ll take a deeper dive into the benefits of implementing a solution that will increase provider networks, provide detailed metrics on what’s working and what isn’t, and how narrow networks and value chaining set practices up for success.
In this first of a two-part article series, Curtis Gattis, CEO and co-founder of LeadingReach, discusses how healthcare organizations participating in risk-based contracting or value-based financial and care delivery models are currently facing major challenges with integrating, managing and tracking care coordination and communication capabilities within provider networks.
Healthcare organizations participating in risk-based contracting or value-based financial and care delivery models are currently facing major challenges with integrating, managing and tracking care coordination and communication capabilities within provider networks. Poor coordination and communication not only cost the healthcare industry billions of dollars each year but also negatively impacts patient outcomes.
In the U.S., about 80% of all serious medical errors involve miscommunication during care transitions to different settings, which results in costly readmissions, missed appointments, medication errors and other preventable harm. It’s fair to say communication in healthcare is broken.
Industry discussions about interoperability aren’t going to slow down any time soon, especially with HHS’ recently announced and finalized interoperability rules. Interoperability, or the ability of different HIT systems to access and exchange information fluidly, is a crucial component to providing better healthcare, especially as value-based care models continue to take center stage for provider organizations.
When patients transition from their primary care physician (PCP), to a specialist, hospital or rehab facility – their medical records should travel with them, or at the very least, be readily accessible along the way. In today’s world where technology is advanced enough to replace loss of limb or self-drive automobiles, this should be a given, right? But it’s still one of the industry’s biggest challenges – one that will never be solved by EHR giants, open APIs or government policies alone. To truly improve and enable the flow of data and communication in the U.S.healthcare system, we need to complement the HHS’ interoperability framework by overhauling our technological approach entirely.
Community spread of COVID-19 in Texas has made primary care physicians the front lines in the fight against the virus, and North-Texas based Catalyst Health Network is working with Clinical Pathology Laboratories and LeadingReach to make testing efficient, safe, and effective. With a limited number of tests, locations, and protective equipment, providers are having to be absolutely sure patients need to be tested for the virus before sending them to a testing site, as they could be quickly overwhelmed by the public.
The three organizations have created a streamlined referral process for potential COVID-19 patients that will match patients with the most appropriate care setting, considering their insurance, location, and health needs. Catalyst also has a call center where patients can call in to get more information about the virus.