Supernova Award Category
The Problem
While Population Health Management may be a new buzzword in a lot of healthcare systems, Mercy Health has been making sure to take proactive care of its patients for years. One key way to be proactive is to understand which chronic conditions a patient has, which best practices apply to those patients, and make sure to treat or test each patient before those procedures become overdue. Previously, this was done with manual file reviews to generate a paper checklist for a given patient before they came in for an appointment.
The Solution
In order to improve the care given and reduce the cost necessary to generate these checklists, a new solution called the Daily Visit Planner was created. This interface exists within the electronic patient’s chart and uses data from within Mercy’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) as well as external data to evaluate which tests or procedures are appropriate for a given patient, when they were last completed, and when they are next due. From within this interface, the provider can not only see what they should perform, order, or schedule, they can jump directly to the portion of that patient’s chart where that action can be completed.
The results
The most important result of this effort is improved patient care: giving physicians a tool that is embedded seamlessly in their workflow greatly reduces the risk of a necessary test or procedure being missed. The data in their hands (both internal and external) also provides a far more complete and consistent view of a patient’s chronic disease than was possible previously. Finally, since this is generated automatically and available for all multiple patient cohorts in the system, it allows Mercy to proactively care for far more patients than it could before.
Metrics
Since implementing the Daily Visit Planner, Mercy has seen significant improvements on multiple fronts. First, generating the interface automatically instead of manually reviewing the files has saved over 100 full-time employees’ worth of time each year. Easy access to this data combined with other population health initiatives improved performance on 3 key metrics (breast cancer screenings, colorectal screenings and Hemoglobin A1c values) within the first four months. With this new data available Mercy was not only able to automate far more disease states (9) and measures (over 50) than before, but a suite of reports and scorecards were built to monitor physician and clinic performance.
The Technology
For the Daily Visit Planner, Mercy was able to successfully combine two toolsets that it already had in house, with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform connected seamlessly to its Epic Electronic Health Record via the Epic BO Integration option.
Disruptive Factor
Mercy pushed the envelope on several fronts with this project. First, Mercy was able to include external data into our tool, so that if a trading partner knew that a particular test had been done, the physician could tell when it was done. Secondly, the solution is embedded natively in the electronic chart, so physicians do not have to log out of one tool and into another or flip screens to access this data. Third, the tool is available for multiple patient populations beyond just the 100,000 patients for whom Mercy is an Accountable Care Organization. Mercy was also able to create a “due to done” process adherence tool to monitor the effectiveness of closing opportunities at the point of care in real-time.
Shining Moment
It isn’t often that an organization can implement one solution that can immediately claim improvements on quality (improved patient care for a broader spectrum of patients), service (a seamless, integrated experience for physicians), and cost (>100 FTEs saved from manually compiling this data), but Mercy’s work on the Daily Visit Planner was able to do just that.