July - 20209We can provide improved outcomes and more cost-efficient care if we can understand all the ways patients engage with healthcare servicestraditional model, a patient with this condition would visit the doctor for a blood pressure check-up three or four times in a year, and those BP readings determined the assessment and suggested treatment. By receiving more frequent, digital blood pressure readings we can intervene more quickly allowing us to deliver better care and achieve better outcomes. The program is successful due to the technology that reviews those readings and uses predictive analysis to determine which readings represent a significant change from the patient's base line. If there is a change, a digital medicine pharmacist is notified, connects with the patient and decides on what treatment intervention is needed such as a drug adjustment. This improves outcomes not just because of a more rapid turn-around cycle, but also because of improved patient compliance from increased engagement. The digital platforms have become a crucial tool in our consumerism strategy to improve patient engagement.Another aspect of digital engagement we have innovated involves new functionality in our patient portal. Traditionally the portal has been used for billing, requesting medication refills and sending messages to providers. We have now started to use our portal to push interactive care plans to patients with certain conditions. This program, called Care Companion, allows us to push through patient portal education, questionnaires and tasks to our patients creating another avenue for patient engagement. Ochsner was one of the first health systems in the country to go live with the Care Companion program. Currently, our kidney transplant patients are enrolled in the Care Companion plan post-transplant to ensure all aspects of their care are being addressed in real-time, including adequate post-transplant medicines, comfort with wound care, and monitoring of weight and blood pressures. We are expanding this program to our orthopedic and heart failure patients in the near future.Precision Medicine InitiativeWhen we traditionally think about patient engagement, we are talking about the more traditional ways that we make assessments of the individual patients. Patients come in and they either have a chief complaint; have something that they are interested in or something that they need attention. With precision medicine, we've expanded care that can look at areas like whole genome sequencing to customize treatments for diseases such as cancers and metabolic diseases. Engagement and treatment plans based upon their genetic predispositions are a new way we are actively engaged our patients. A different aspect of precision medicine goes beyond genetic analysis. We will soon have the ability to bring big data to the bedside. In the near future, we will shift from just using our medical knowledge and the knowledge which came from established research to make decisions on treatment and coupling it with large data sets of millions of patients and real-time data to decide what precisely is best for this patient. This predictive approach will allow our systems to identify patients, and review past treatments and outcomes to then determine the best optimal treatments. This will also allow us to change the outcomes and course correct if needed faster as well as improve shared decision making between providers and patients, where in the past we would have to rely only on outcomes measured in a published research trials. This shared decision making is an even more advanced way to engage patients. Piece of AdviceAs we move into 2020, one of our leadership strategies focuses on the big `I' and little `i'. The big `I' refers to big innovations and little `i' to incremental optimizations. I think for CMIO's today, it's about balancing these two concepts. You need to stay focused on little `i' issues that make things easier for your providers. This customization is key to preventing burnout, keeping providers happy so they can best engage with patients. At the same time, we also need to maintain focus on the big "I" to stay in line with tomorrow's vision of healthcare with projects like digital health and big data analytics. Organizations that can maintain this focus, centered on patient engagement, will achieve better outcomes for their patients at a lower cost and thrive in the new world of value-based healthcare.
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