It’s a trend that’s been in motion for years: working physicians are increasingly within a decade of the traditional retirement age of 65. In fact, more than 40 percent of providers are over 55 years old. What’s more: that percentage has increased each year since 2008 and shows no signs of reversing.
Put that together with the spirit-breaking workloads physicians have faced over the past several years – leading many to leave the profession early – and physician-led care teams are facing a unique problem.
But we know pharmacists are uniquely capable of making physician-led team-based care more financially efficient. So it should be no surprise that we know, too, how pharmacy technology can power physician-led team-based care as more of those providers retire.
Here, we’ll go over three tips for delivering consistent care – and how RxLive offers a pharmacy technology powers a flexible solution to meet your team’s dynamic needs.
1. Keep the focus on the patient to increase patient satisfaction
We know improving quality measures, like HEDIS performance, is integral to a successful value-based care strategy. Why? Because a dedicated approach to quality measures helps clinicians focus on the consistent, positive patient outcomes that boost patient satisfaction.
Of course, improving patient outcomes is the right thing to do and the most efficient way to support population-level health. What’s more: with patient satisfaction now a quadruple-rated measure, it also supports the financial sustainability that helps networks maintain improved patient outcomes (and satisfaction) for the long run.
With that in mind, it’s worth saying again: providers are already stretched thin. More physician retirements only promise to make it more difficult to provide the quality care patients appreciate – and, to be sure, need. So any technology that makes it easier to deliver care and helps keep the focus on the patient is paramount.
RxLive’s pharmacy technology makes it easy for all members of your care team to manage and work with the data necessary to support better population health. In fact, our platform helps simplify and automate parts of this process, filter patient data by criteria you select, and turn it into custom protocols.
This makes it easier for physicians working toward retirement to reduce their workloads, collaborate with other physicians throughout their network, and leverage the patient-centered benefits of pharmacist-led interventions. And in each case, patients and care teams members alike can remain confident that the data they have is guiding consistent, quality care.
And when patients receive consistent, quality care no matter who they see during an office visit or telehealth consultation, they’re more likely to experience higher levels of satisfaction.
2. Prioritize impactability to power consistent population-level outcomes
Delivering consistent care from all members of your practice – regardless of where on the continuum of care a patient is treated – is a great step toward achieving positive outcomes. But what powers that population-level focus?
Impactability.
When physicians turn their focus to impactability, it helps ensure they deliver the right care to the right patients at the right time. So setting impactability as a standard can help networks navigate transitioning patients to new providers and distributing work across teams.
As an example, let’s consider how medication reconciliation can improve when providers take an impactability-focused approach to patient data.
We all know the dangers of an inefficient med rec process – an inaccurate chart can lead to adverse drug-drug interactions or delayed treatment, each of which makes it more likely a patient will end up in the hospital. An impactability-focused strategy is key to not only avoiding adverse outcomes, but ensuring interventions offer the best outcomes possible.
My.RxLive makes it easy to streamline medication reconciliation, ensuring accurate access to complete medication histories for all patients. Then, we aggregate that information and run analytics on this data to…
- Identify the patients most likely to benefit from intervention
- Intervene with those patients before they have adverse medical events, like medication-related stroke or drug-drug interactions.
- Document outcomes to support quality measures and develop the population-level protocols that power positive outcomes for all patients.
The next step? Ensuring all links along the healthcare chain can communicate without a hitch. That’s why RxLive helps providers…
3. Streamline communication across the care continuum via telehealth
As physicians retire, networks need to transition patients to new providers. And for practices that scale down, the remaining physicians need a means of efficiently delivering impactful, patient-focused care.
So it’s important that physician-led care teams maintain a consistent flow of information. One communication-forward solution? Leverage RxLive’s telehealth technology to…
- Scale your team’s bandwidth to match your changing needs with our fractional network of pharmacists.
- Foster clear, consistent communication between team members as well as patients and their providers.
That makes it easier for you to provide consistent, personalized care as your providers transition into retirement.
Pharmacist-led interventions improve patient health
We started RxLive to help all clinicians leverage the power of Pharmacy to work at the top of their license. But for folks looking forward to retirement, we want to help make that transition better, too.
Powered by the right technology, pharmacist-led interventions improve patient health outcomes and ease the burden of delivering quality care. But more than that, pharmacists help providers manage how their entire team can efficiently and effectively revolutionize patient care.So whether you’re thinking about retirement or how to level-up your practice, reach out.
