CipherHealth recently co-presented with one of our partners, New York City Health + Hospitals, on a webinar hosted by the Center for Care Innovations (CCI). Based in Oakland, California, CCI cultivates innovation within organizations impacting care and services for low-income and disadvantaged populations. This webinar provided valuable insights into how innovative organizations strengthen the health and wellbeing of underserved communities through comprehensive patient engagement.
Leaders from community health centers, clinic coalitions, and primary care departments of county health systems joined the webinar to learn how New York City Health + Hospitals, the country’s largest safety-net health system, engages patients across the continuum. Allison Wishner, Clinical Business Analyst at New York City Health + Hospitals, provided insights into her organization’s patient engagement priorities and important considerations when deciding to utilize technology to optimize outreach. Priorities for her system included:
- Encouraging patients who have not seen their primary care provider in 12 or more months and/or have out of control diabetes or hypertension to schedule an appointment with their primary care provider
- Increasing breast and colorectal cancer screening rates for patients
- Improving medication adherence and prescription pick-up for control (in comparison to rescue) medications
In evaluating different outreach and engagement options and technologies, an important consideration for Allison’s team was the ability to conduct outreach to every patient within a designated population. Since New York City Health + Hospitals serves over two million New Yorkers annually, efficient and consistent outreach with the flexibility to scale as the organization’s needs evolved was key. To better care for its diverse patient population, New York City Health + Hospitals needed to provide outreach in a wide variety of languages; as such, culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach was a priority for Allison’s team.
With these considerations, New York City Health + Hospitals selected CipherHealth as their patient engagement partner. As the KLAS #1 ranked patient outreach vendor for the second year in a row, CipherHealth’s comprehensive and integrated patient engagement platform is a trusted technology partner to more than five hundred healthcare organizations across the country. Furthermore, CipherHealth’s proven track record of outcomes improvement with similar patient populations and high-touch account management support were key factors in New York City Health + Hospital’s selection of CipherHealth.
Through the use of CipherOutreach, CipherHealth’s automated patient outreach software, New York City Health + Hospitals is ensuring all eligible patients receive preventive health outreach to close gaps in care. For example, automated outreach calls remind patients of the need to schedule a primary care appointment. Patients who indicate they would like to schedule a PCP appointment are informed that a staff member will reach out within two hours. Patients also select their preferred language at the beginning of the automated call. By obtaining this information early in the process, call center staff can proactively identify engage with the appropriate translation services team member to ensure patients have the right resources to take the appropriate action for their health.
With the use of technology-enabled workflows, New York City Health + Hospitals demonstrated significant improvements in closing gaps in care. Through partnering with CipherHealth, the organization conducted over 100,000 preventive outreach calls during a 14-month period – successfully scheduling more primary care appointments and closing more critical care gaps than if they were not utilizing technology. In addition, they were able to glean powerful insights into their patients’ language preferences based on how calls were answered, a key data point that will help better serve the community in the short- and long-term.
By proactively engaging patients in their preventive health, New York City Health + Hospitals demonstrates its commitment to providing comprehensive care to all New Yorkers. Through delivering high-quality and affordable healthcare services to keep patients healthy and to address the needs of New York City’s diverse populations, New York City Health + Hospitals enables New Yorkers to live their healthiest lives – all of which start with preventive health.
