The Treatspace Referral Management Blog

Insight, ideas, and resources for high-performance referral management

PCMH Redesign Reduces the Heavy Load on Reporting

Posted by Christian Kratsas on 4/20/17 1:04 PM

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Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) embodies the current trajectory of healthcare in that the patient is the focus of the medical model. The National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) PCMH program is vastly adopted, with more than 12,000 practices, 60,000 clinicians, and 100 payors participating. In fact, 1 in 6 eligible physicians in the U.S. practices in an NCQA-Recognized PCMH.

With the objective to strengthen patient-provider relationships, reduce healthcare costs, and improve quality, NCQA continues to accelerate the growth of value-based care with the remodel of their PCMH program. Changes to the new PCMH model reduces the burden of the reporting process and focuses on increased healthcare quality and practice performance.

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Topics: Care Coordination, Healthcare Analytics, Value-Based Care, PCMH

Getting Hands-On With Handoffs

Posted by Jeremy Guttman on 8/31/16 2:45 PM

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Image courtesy of flickr

Problems with handoffs are a big deal in clinical practice. Defective handoffs lead to patient harm, treatment delays, inappropriate treatment, and longer stays in the hospital. In a typical patient handoff between physicians, important patient information is often not given to physicians who take over care of a patient. In a hospital, “[s]hift changes, also known as handoffs, are prime opportunities for key information about a patient’s condition to get lost in the shuffle,” according to a recently released study about patient handoffs in JAMA Internal Medicine [1].

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Topics: Care Coordination, Healthcare Analytics, Referral Management, Healthcare Data, Care Transitions

Using Healthcare Data to Distinguish Your Practice From Your Competitors

Posted by Jeremy Guttman on 8/2/16 5:05 PM

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Journalist Fareed Zakaria is certain that those who prevail in tomorrow’s health care arena are the ones who figure out how to use the troves of data at their fingertips to distinguish themselves from competitors.

“[W]hat you do with that data will probably be the key differentiator going forward,” Zakaria explains at a recent healthcare conference, the Health Forum and American Hospital Association Leadership Summit.

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Topics: Healthcare Analytics, Referral Management, HIT, Healthcare Data

Referral Management Will Prevent More Than 20,000 Cases of Blindness Each Year

Posted by Jeremy Guttman on 6/2/16 6:13 PM

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The leading cause of blindness worldwide is diabetes. However, referral management makes a significant impact on saving the eyesight of diabetic patients. Most people who have diabetes for more than 20 years develop diabetic retinopathy1, a condition where elevated blood sugar damages the blood vessels inside the retina. Over 7.7 million American adults have diabetic retinopathy today and that number is expected to double by 2050. The condition affects almost 30% of the US diabetic population over the age of 402 and causes up to 24,000 new cases of blindness in the US each year.

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Topics: Coordinated Care, Healthcare Analytics, Referral Management, Closed-Loop Referral Management, Patient Adherence, Diabetic Eye Exam

High Performance Referral Management vs EHRs

Posted by Jeremy Guttman on 5/11/16 5:30 PM

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It would be easier to coordinate team-based medical care on facebook rather than with EHR systems.

- John Halamka, CIO | Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and co-chair of the federal HIT Standards Committee, at the HIMSS conference in March 20161

EHRs aren’t enough

A common misconception is that an electronic health record (EHR) can close referral loops and provide high-performance referral management for primary care practices. However, not long after EHRs were implemented, users quickly realized that EHRs alone are not able to establish a pipeline that allows data to flow between PCPs and specialists from different organizations.2

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Topics: Care Coordination, Healthcare Analytics, Referral Management, Closed-Loop Referral Management, Interoperability

The Perilous Referral Management Journey [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted by Jeremy Guttman on 4/22/16 6:02 PM

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The New England Journal of Medicine describes the traditional patient referral process as a perilous journey [1]. Right off the bat, only half of patients show up to their referred specialty physician appointments [2].

In fact, the referral process is so fragmented that even when patients do show up to their specialist appointments, only 32% of specialists will receive clinical information from the PCP prior to seeing the referred patient. [3]

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Topics: Coordinated Care, Healthcare Analytics, Referral Management, Interoperability, Closed-Loop Referrals

Care Coordination is Broken and You Can Fix It

Posted by Christian Kratsas on 11/12/15 1:07 PM

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Care coordination is complex. Interoperability is far from reach. Patient information is difficult to track, especially when primary care physicians and specialists utilize different EHR systems. You need to stay competitive and make faster, smarter decisions. You want to fix these challenges, but you can’t because you don’t have the resources.

EHRs and practice management systems have referral order capability but are transactional and not built for true closed loop referral management. There is a difference between tracking and managing your patient referrals. So how are you going to manage health populations and improve patient care?

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Topics: Coordinated Care, Healthcare Analytics, Referral Network