It goes without saying that our focus in the US healthcare landscape is to drive quality care and improve outcomes for all patients that we seek to serve. From clinics and medical offices to hospitals, patients are seen in a variety of settings. During the panel session: “Leveraging CipherOutreach to Improve Clinical Outcomes Across the Continuum” we had four outstanding panelists share how CipherOutreach has helped their organization to both improve and impact clinical outcomes.
Centralized Call Model Enables System to Scale
Since 2015, Intermountain Healthcare has partnered with CipherHealth to ensure all ED and inpatient discharges receive a post-discharge CipherOutreach call. Ben Becker, Director of Enterprise Care Management at Intermountain, discussed how pairing a centralized follow up model with CipherOutreach enabled them to implement seven additional specialized calls and scale a 24/7 operation across 23 acute care facility patient populations. This includes outreach programs designed for newborns, new mothers, heart failure patients, open-heart surgery patients, COPD patients, total hip & knee patients, and pediatrics. Patients indicating issues or concerns after being discharged home receive a secondary call from a call center nurse. As a result, the health system has saved over $2 million for thirty-day readmissions as a result of a 41% readmission reduction after implementing CipherOutreach throughout the health system.
Automated Calls Enhance Patient Satisfaction
CipherOutreach has not only aided in readmission reduction, but it has also played a crucial role in patient experience and satisfaction. Namgyal Kyulo, Director of Clinical Experience Informatics and Analytics at UCLA Health, highlighted his health system’s commitment to improving quality beyond readmissions. While UCLA saw tremendous success in 30-day preventable readmissions, specifically a 34.6% lower odds to readmit for patients that engaged with their post-discharge call, patient perception of care was also improved as a result of their various post-discharge call programs. Additionally, UCLA Health saw statistically significant (95% CI) gains in HCAHPS scores when patients engaged with the CipherOutreach calls.
CipherOutreach Steadily Reduces Re-hospitalizations
At Penn Medicine, Katherine Major, Director of Home Palliative Care and Infusion Therapy, was on a mission to reduce end-of-life re-hospitalizations. Using CipherOutreach, Katherine and her team at Penn Medicine have successfully and steadily decreased re-hospitalization rates since 2015. By leveraging the CipherHealth outreach calls, they saw a 1.4% decrease in re-hospitalizations when patients engaged with the outreach call. The success of the program has relied on CipherHealth being able to assist Penn in providing the right care at the right time in conjunction with an attentive case management team to anticipate complications and treat symptoms.
Visibility into Patient Issues Enables Proactive Follow-up
For patients who are discharged to home on IV antibiotics, continuity of care becomes the key focus to a successful outcome. BronxCare Health System saw the value in establishing automated outreach for these patients, while also aiming to reduce avoidable ER visits and re-hospitalizations. Charnicia Huggins, a Clinical Pharmacist for the health system, shared how CipherOutreach allowed her organization to achieve a 20% reduction in readmissions and provided a vehicle for patients to voice safety concerns and clinicians to address their patients’ adverse effects. By increasing visibility into the issues patients face when discharged on antibiotics, the team was able to create pathways that assist patients in navigating their care once home.
As we concluded our panel each speaker reflected on their most memorable patient story and the impact it had not only on their organization but also on their community. This was certainly a captivating moment and further proof why caregivers do the work they do. From Katherine sharing how loved ones felt supported when their partners went through end of life care to Ben detailing how a patient was unable to get prescribed medications from four different pharmacies and a CipherOutreach alert helped him resolve his issue; it is evident that each organization is committed to driving improved outcomes through the use of technology.
