We carry around a mantra of sorts at WellTrackONE – We have as a corporate goal that for transforming healthcare from “Retrospective” to “Prospective.” What does that mean and why is it important?
Traditional healthcare (what we have all been part of in the last several decades) has been “Retrospective.” We have analyzed claims, labs and medications to determine how well we have done as a healthcare organization. Wading through mountains of meta data gives us a report card on our performance. We are able to pinpoint our cost of delivery by analyzing RVUs, claim remittances and payer metrics.
But what does that do for us in the big picture if we’re really trying to prevent cost in the future?
Very little as it turns out. We’re very adept at calculating how many patients had a heart attack last year but what we’re not so good at is predicting what patients could have a heart attack THIS year.
“Prospective” healthcare is the look ahead, into the future. It can radically and fundamentally change healthcare in these ways:
1. It allows the identification of the highest risk patients, sorted worst to least, so that the care coordination team can manage those patients. Notice I did not say “physicians” would manage the patients. Physicians are way too busy to take on yet another burden such as managing a population…instead the care coordination team should have that responsibility.
2. With the highest risk patients identified, the care can transform into an “intervention” strategy using the care coordination team and patients can be “vectored” (my Air Force term) into the proper channel of healthcare.
3. Using this strategy, care coordination teams will now be able to look ahead to predict what patients could have heart attacks or encounter a catastrophic fall and resulting break or have a chronic illness onset. These “events” can be predicted with some accuracy and prevented. This can save countless dollars downstream by avoidance of ER visits, hospital stays, LTC and SNF stays and nursing homes.
Sounds great, but how does the care coordination team get this information so they can intervene and begin “Prospective” healthcare for their patients?
WellTrackONE processes Annual Wellness Visits for every Medicare patient in an organization. As a by-product of that, we collect over 250 data points PER visit, every year. Then we give the organization a reporting tool that allows them to risk stratify their patients by chronic disease.
This means that at the touch of a button, the organization can see the highest to lowest risk patients for:
– Cardiovascular Disease
– Colorectal Cancer
– Prostate Cancer
– Stroke/TIA
– Diabetes
– Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) – Pre-Alzheimer’s
– Depression
– Functional Capacity risk – falls, dizziness, slipping
– Osteoporosis/Arthritis
Imagine what your organization could do with data such as this. Your ability to be “Prospective” in healthcare management would allow you to intervene consistently with your Medicare population and prevent millions of dollars of cost. The net savings would be very welcome to your hard working physicians and staff.
The WellTrackONE system provides this data seamlessly for you. There is no extra cost. All you need to do is let us engage with your Medicare patient population and in a very short time you will have this data at your fingertips.
You will change healthcare from “Retrospective” to “Prospective”.