How expanding virtual options can drive value-based care

One way Northern Health, a major provider in Melbourne’s north, is creating value for its patients and community is by enabling its doctors to offer virtual options.

THE PROBLEM

It started during the pandemic. Like the rest of the sector, the organization also had to accelerate its digital transformation by embracing digital tools for delivering remote care. However, they had to make do with the few technologies that were available at the time. “The systems were clunky, there was little or limited integration of our systems and poor interoperability,” recalls Dr. Katharine See, head of health outcomes and director of Respiratory Medicine at Northern Health.

Once the dust settled, they realized they could never go back to the way things were before. Northern Health now receives more than 114,000 admissions annually; The Emergency Department alone treats more than 111,000 patients annually, while the additional Victorian Virtual Emergency Department now answers calls from more than 103,000 patients.

“Much of our care returned to a traditional face-to-face model following the easing of COVID restrictions. Given our rapidly growing population, we recognized the need to do things fundamentally differently.”

Dr. Katharine See, Chief Health Outcomes Officer, Director of Respiratory Medicine, Northern Health

The increasing demand for healthcare due to an aging population, together with the expected increase in the number of cases of chronic diseases and persistent problems in accessing primary care, makes it necessary to change the way care is delivered – especially care that uses digital technology, says Uri Bettesh. , CEO and founder of Israel and US-based Datos Health.

As a region, Australia/New Zealand is committed to building a digitally enabled healthcare system. “The critical element for ANZ, as we see it, is the need to implement solutions to increasing workforce pressures with proven innovative models,” Bettesh said. In addition to workforce solutions, enabling the real-time exchange of information between and among patients and care teams is also imperative to “prevent siled care and support care transitions that are so critical to continuity of care and health outcomes.”

PROPOSAL

Northern Health took a value-based approach to delivering care and began expanding virtual options, first to its lung cancer patients.

“As leader of the Lung Tumor Stream, I regularly reviewed the findings from the Victorian Lung Cancer Registry report, which showed that we were performing well compared to other healthcare providers. However, relying solely on administrative data had limitations, meaning we did not have a definitive measure of whether we were achieving the outcomes that mattered most to our patients and the community,” said Dr. See.

“We decided we needed to develop a digital care pathway to measure what matters most to our patients to address this,” she added..

They ultimately found success in that project. Recognizing its benefits, it was a logical next step to digitize other patient journeys within the organization – but it had to be done through a single platform that could handle multiple use cases.

In that one platform, Northern Health specifically looked for the following key requirements: flexible and user-friendly; interoperability; automates workflows; extends clinical reach and drives clinical efficiency; reduces the burden on the physician; increases patient self-management and freedom of choice; and multilingual.

The organization found a partner in New York-based Datos Health, which offers the Open Care platform for delivering hybrid care.

With this implementation, the organization hopes to achieve the following results:

• improved equality and accessibility

• maximize your return on investment by investing in secondary prevention (such as cardiac rehabilitation)

• increased activation and improved self-management

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

Datos provides a comprehensive open platform for customizing care plans based on the needs of both physicians and patients. Physicians can create their care plans from scratch or choose from more than 200 templates that can be customized based on patient population, acuity levels and devices, among other things. Different departments of an organization can also tailor their care plans based on system integrations, preferred use of AI, and device integrations.

Open care helps automate tasks by automatically sending instructions, education and targeted actions to patients, as well as reminders to take medications, complete questionnaires or measure vital signs via the accompanying CareApps mobile application.

“Choosing an open solution for remote health monitoring ensures adaptability to the diverse needs of our community. By using a customizable cloud-based platform, we can enable our physicians to track our patients longitudinally through the alert system and understand who is at greater risk for decline. This allows us to effectively prioritize their care,” explains Dr. See out.

Together with Datos’ Australian partner IKAO Health, Northern Health will integrate Open Care into various patient pathways, including cardiac rehabilitation, back pain, severe asthma and gestational diabetes. There is also a plan to expand it to community health care programs.

“We plan to go live with four programs within the next three months, with another ten in the pipeline by the end of the year. We are currently finalizing the integrations,” said an IKAO Health representative known.

RESULTS

So far, Northern Health staff are “overwhelmingly positive” about the virtual care platform. In fact, the organization has a “long waiting list” of employees eager to implement this into their respective programs, said Dr. See.

Reflecting on their perspective on value-based care using virtual tools, Dr. See the following:

“A virtual care model positively impacts value-based care by improving access to healthcare through the implementation of new technology, empowering our patients to participate in their own healthcare, reducing the costs associated with traditional in-person visits are reduced and data analytics is used to support continuous quality improvement. By leveraging virtual care platforms, Northern Health can deliver more accessible, patient-centered, cost-effective, and high-quality care that aligns with the goals of value-based care models, ultimately improving health outcomes and patient satisfaction while optimizing resource use. The transition from inpatient to community-based care focuses on shifting from reactive to proactive care, ultimately creating value for both patients and the healthcare system.”