Improving quality care through IT/analytics for team-based care interventions.

Abstract

316 Background: Team based care is essential to achieve coordinated, high-quality care. We recognized a responsibility to identify new treatment patients to provided targeted, team based interventions. Previous attempts at identifying new patients were difficult, manual, and delayed. Our aim was to provide personnel with the appropriate means to identify new patients for services such as patient education, financial navigation, social work assessments and outreach calls for care coordination. As a result of multiple barriers and challenges, only 51% of our new patients were being identified. This project fit well in the larger context of the transformation of health care delivery through our participation in the Oncology Care Model, which places an emphasis on team based care. Methods: We used the Plan-Do-Study-Act continuous improvement model to develop an automated data set to identify new treatment patients across the oncology service line and leveraged our Information Technology (IT) Analytics team. A report was established based utilizing logic to identify the first appointment scheduled within the department and a secondary tab to look back at new patients within a three week time frame. Information is housed within a business intelligence software system that is easy for end users to see and understand. The initial report was validated for accuracy at an identification rate of 93% and the 3 week “look back” report gives the ability to identify the remaining patients. Results: We have seen marked improvements metrics as a result of the utilization of this report. Our Financial Navigators have been able to improve out of pocket estimate calls to 98% in April of 2018. Social Work initial patient assessments have improved by 40%, post chemotherapy outreach calls from RN Care Coordinators have improved 12%, and we have seen a 20% increase in the number of documented oncology patient education encounters. Conclusions: This project demonstrates the value of using IT/Data Analytics for continuous quality improvement projects related to patient centered team based care. The cross collaboration of stakeholders in data analysis should be explored as a mechanism to transform care through key services and interventions.