Whether CPC+ or not, every practice wants to improve the health of its patients. In this customer spotlight, we feature Inspired Health Group in Orchard Park, NY, to learn more about how it has improved its population health and ways it has grown since becoming a CPC+ practice. We are highlighting some of its main growth tactics to help others learn from its exciting path.
Who are they?
Inspired Health Group has two physicians, a husband-wife team, a Nurse Practitioner and four Physician Assistants. It believes that to improve health & wellbeing you need to take a three-pronged approach and address body, mind and spirit.
IHG knows its acronyms and is part of them all (ACO, IPA, PCMH and now CPC+ track 2). It made the decision to become a CPC+ practice very easy, since it already believed its fundamental mission to continuously transform its practice to provide the highest-quality care possible to its patients. It welcomed the educational and advisory support, accountability and additional financial support CPC+ would bring to bolster its practice.
Challenges and adjustments
The biggest change IHG made once it became a CPC+ practice was a shift from helping the individual to managing a population of patients. It’s easy to care for the patient who comes in for regular office visits; it’s much harder to improve the wellbeing of patients who do not.
In the past, IHG would run monthly campaigns. During Breast Cancer Awareness month in October, the team would run a list to find out who needed to come in for a mammogram. Or during flu season, it would reach out to patients who haven’t gotten a flu shot, but IHG wanted to do more.
IHG started by identifying where it was at so they could create a baseline. For example, how many patients hadn’t scheduled their annual visits? That data was passed on to the care team to get those patients scheduled. IHG then decided on the top 20 metrics it was going to invest in; every month, its Director of Business Development & Strategy, runs a report on who they need to reach out to.
To make sure this is a practice-wide affair, the team participates in closing gaps in care graphs are posted in the lunchroom detailing how close IHG is to its goal. That way, every team member should know exactly where they’re at.
Meeting comprehensive medication management requirements
One initiative IHG needed to implement for CPC+ was comprehensive medication management (CMM). Before the program, the extent of its relationship with a pharmacist was coordinating pill packs. Originally, the team considered bringing someone in-house, but found the cost would be prohibitive. Yes, there were care management dollars that could be attributed to the pharmacist, but IHG was using it to pay for other essential day-to-day care coordination tasks; there simply wasn’t enough to do some of the desirable but non-essential things that CPC+ mandates.
They heard about RxLive® and the pilot program that allows RxLive to demonstrate its services at no financial risk to the practice. Richard explained, “What I hope that people realize is the offer around the pilot practice allows the practice to have no financial exposure whatsoever. What’s the loss?
After speaking to a patient during a 30-minute, in-depth medication review, RxLive clinical pharmacists make suggestions about their prescriptions. IHG’s doctors have accepted 80 to 90% of suggestions that have been made, which has helped improve the health of its patients and saved them money. IHG’s patients are averaging 1.5 to 2 clinical interventions per consult (de-prescribe, dose change, drug change, etc…) and patients are saving significantly on their out-of-pocket drug costs as well.
Inspired Health Group stated that “While CMM was a concern when we started the CPC+ program, with RxLive we now have a low cost solution that seamlessly integrates with the great care we hope we are already providing.”
Looking forward
For practices like IHG, the shift to value-based payment models has been a major boon. No longer are they doing all of this work that they aren’t getting paid for. Team members readily admit there are areas where they continually strive to do better, but they know their mission never changes, which is to support the care of the whole person…body, mind and spirit. These values are what continues to drive them forward.
If you represent a practice that’s struggling to provide comprehensive medication management to your patients, call us at 866.234.4974 to learn more about how RxLive can partner with you to provide this service at no cost.
