We live in the age of rankings and top 10 lists. From the best graduate
schools to the fastest-growing small businesses and most employee-friendly
employers, the public increasingly relies on third-party rankings to choose
between competing brands, businesses and service providers.
Certainly, nowhere is this trend more pronounced than in health care and
the endless “best hospital” lists that rank institutions based
on quality of care and other factors.
But what
is quality health care? And how can patients evaluate the quality of care
they receive?
According to Christy Mokrohisky, VP of population health management at
St. Joseph Heritage Healthcare, quality health care for patients is as
simple as
getting the right care at the right time.
For St. Joseph Hoag Health, this means offering a
full continuum of care
(shown below) that empowers patients to access services from multiple sites and sources
– from
Acute Care to
Recovery & Rehab Care to
Community-Based Care – ultimately connecting care receivers to urgent care, wellness services,
and everything in between.

Making sure patients get the right care at the right time starts with
Population Health Management (PHM), the use of large amounts of patient data to determine population-wide
health trends and solutions, and then leveraging those findings through
personalized care. “The purpose of health care is to improve the
health of patients, but we have built a system that often intervenes too
late, when a person is very sick and needs expensive hospital services,”
Mokrohisky explained. “Population Health Management is all about
knowing who our patients are, offering services to keep them healthy and
intervening with care as soon as symptoms begin. We use data to be proactive
and preventive on the individual patient level to arrive at a new level
of care.”
Mokrohisky said that PHM is about engaging patients, and asking the right
questions, to encourage better outcomes. Are patients engaged enough in
their health? Do they understand what might happen if they don’t
take the prescribed action? “A diabetic may feel good enough on
a day-to-day basis, for example, to start missing the at-home blood-sugar
tests,” she said. “However, daily diabetic monitoring is important
because it alerts us to problems. When we know what the problems are,
we can intervene with the right care and ultimately change behavior to
increase their chances for successful, long-term outcomes.”
St. Joseph Heritage Healthcare uses the “Triple Aim” approach,
established by the Institute for Health Care Improvement, to assess the
quality of care:
-
Improved Health. Promoting wellness and reducing the risk of illness or disease.
-
Enhanced Patient Experience. Measuring and tracking a particular population’s experience of care,
including quality, access and reliability.
-
Reduced or Managed Cost. The goal of measuring and controlling the per-capita cost of care.
For forward-thinking businesses that invest in PHM, the ROI can be dramatic.
After its first year, Western Digital’s on-site wellness center
that is operated by St. Joseph Hoag health, reported employee participation
rates of more than 50 percent and a $1 million savings in both its productivity
and cost of claims. Adding to the good news was an increase in anecdotal
employee satisfaction leading to a noticeable boost in morale and a happier,
healthier population.
At St. Joseph Hoag Health, wellness has become a crucial component of efforts
to build healthier communities. This approach is shifting the traditional
focus away from treating illness to preventing illness. This new model
of care puts the patient at the center of the process, rather than the
doctor or provider, and allows individuals to take greater control over
their wellbeing and health care.