Greenway Community equips practices to manage population health
Administrators at North Ottawa Community Health system in Grand Haven, Michigan, understood they could boost financial performance by focusing on the segment of the patient population most in need of care.
They implemented Greenway Community — a population management solution from Greenway Health — and found immediate opportunities for improvement as they prepared for the future.
For a practice shifting from a fee-for-service to a pay-for-performance model, managing population health is critical. Greenway Community can build that bridge.
Immediate benefits, long-term results
An integrated set of analytic, risk stratification, care management, and data exchange tools, Greenway Community allows providers to improve population outcomes while keeping down costs.
Brittani Anderson, quality and performance manager for North Ottawa, uses Greenway Community’s analytics capabilities to work with quality measures that affect the practice’s incentive program performance.
As a Greenway Community user, she has access to dashboards that show each provider’s performance in terms of quality measures relative to his or her peers. She uses the dashboards to identify areas for improvement.
Such conversations are not always easy. Having the information laid out in black and white enables meaningful discussions about opportunities to change practice patterns.
“We now bring these dashboards to meetings, and that’s the first thing the providers flip to,” Anderson said.
The big picture
Population health, in a broader view, examines the health outcomes of large populations to understand what makes people sick and how to treat them. The 5% of the population accounting for $1.5 trillion in healthcare spending includes patients with chronic conditions that researchers intend to better understand through data.
Identify, manage, and engage
North Ottawa is one of a growing number of healthcare practices that have discovered the benefits of Greenway Community.
The solution helps practices determine highest-risk patient groups from health and cost perspectives, and identify gaps in care (a diabetic patient missing an annual eye exam, for example). Based on these insights, practice employees can reach out to patients to check in, schedule follow-up appointments, and otherwise engage them in their care.
The goal is to keep patients healthy. A major advantage of Greenway Community is its ability to integrate information from an EHR. The solution can deliver important clinical information directly to practices.
“External data is integral,” said Zach Blunt, manager of product management, population, and patient engagement for Greenway. “Practices leveraging community relationships stand to benefit. Access to a patient’s medical history enables a practice to provide the most appropriate treatment. A robust population health program helps practices avoid redundancies in care, in addition to saving costs.
“It’s really challenging to impact care if you don’t have full visibility to the care that a patient is receiving,” said Stephanie Hales, manager of Greenway Revenue Services solutions.
Greenway Community also helps standardize processes. The practice that embraces the solution positions itself to achieve organizational goals, whether they relate to care coordination, the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), or Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH).
A pressing need
The United States spends $3 trillion a year on healthcare — and 5% of the population spends roughly half this sum.
By focusing on this segment, providers engage the patient population most in need, bring down healthcare costs, and take an active role in value-based care.
“In this country, we are shifting from reactive care to proactive care,” said Chris Gibson, product analyst with Greenway. “It’s no longer waiting for something to happen. It’s proactively keeping tabs on patients.”
It starts on the practice level. Patients can improve their conditions by working with providers to follow care plans. Greenway Community brings it all together.
