SAVE THE DATE and RSVP - Please!

The Beacon Patient Advisory group continues to provide great insight into healthcare delivery and our community. Even though a major winter storm canceled our January meeting we continued to do work virtually. The Maine Quality Counts, Patient Advisory Council, is working on a presentation to spark interest and understanding around the healthcare challenges facing our country and our state and ultimately encourage patients to get involved and be a part of the solution. We were asked to look over the presentation for clarity and to offer any edits as well as suggestions on how it might be used.

The group was also asked to weigh in on a patient guide that would help patients get the care they needed at their primary care practice. Feedback so far is positive not only from patients, but from the nurse care coordinators. Provided Mother Nature cooperates, we meet again this month to discuss best ways to build and sustain a region of engaged patients so that we can constantly improve how we deliver care to our communities.

Have You Watched Our Videos?

Please feel free to share the link as they reinforce our mission and vision for a  healthy community.
 

Clinical Leadership 

Mental Health

HIT / Meaningful Use

Rick and Diana's Story

Performance Improvement  

Patti's Story

Bangor Beacon Leadership 

Eric's Story

Members of the Clinical Transformation Community of Practice continue to look for more efficient ways to care for patients. Just four months ago they decided to turn their focus on three disease measures and see if they could "move the needle" on them. "I think there is untapped power in sitting down with individual providers and working on change," shares Robert Allen, MD, executive medical director at PCHC.

The drive is constant for doctors Robert Allen, Jim Raczek, Donald Krause, and Frank Bragg. These four doctors collectively have more than a hundred years of experience providing quality and innovative patient care. They are convinced more than ever that technology, team work, and patient engagement can lead to higher quality care, better quality of life, and reduce the cost of healthcare.

In September of 2012, three clinical priorities were outlined. The measures were chosen due to data indicating a lack of desired improvement since 2010, but were also chosen because their clinical significance. Not to mention the excess cost that these disease specific measures have on our health care systems. "Providers are now aware that these metrics are important. It is easy to get to 85 percent, but to improve beyond that to 95 percent you need to invest in infrastructure and redesign systems. I feel as though we have just taken the first step," shares Donald Krause, MD, St Joseph Healthcare.

Clinical Priorities

•  LDL Cholesterol is a type of fat found in your body. Your total cholesterol includes LDL (low-density lipoprotein) and HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol.

LDL is called "bad" cholesterol because it can build up in the walls of your arteries and form plaque. Plaque build-up in the arteries can reduce blood flow and increase your risk of heart disease.

• Hemoglobin A1C greater than nine. Blood Glucose helps you to recognize and understand the impact of your day to day choices of food and exercise on your blood glucose.  It tells you your blood sugar at that moment. To help you understand how well you have controlled your blood sugar level over a period of two to three months, a provider will order a blood test called Hemoglobin A1c.  Often referred to as an A1C a "snapshot" of your average daily blood glucose from the previous three months - it lets you know if you have your diabetes under control!

• Blood pressure greater than 140/90

 Innovative Solutions:

An LDL auditing report tool was developed to pull out patients in the practices that were either in need of having of a new LDL reading, needed a medication, or highlighted patients who may have gone undetected or undiagnosed with LDL greater than100. This was first piloted at EMMC's Husson Internal Medicine and then shared throughout the Bangor Beacon primary care practices. "Coming together has been the most important part. We will be able to institute evidence based medicine and make it real in our community. We have the infrastructure and history of collaboration to really make things happen a lot quicker than before Beacon," explains Frank Bragg, MD, EMMC's Husson Internal Medicine.

 An audit of Hgb A1C greater than nine was done. The team discussed different protocols that practices had developed as to when to refer to care management and/or specialty care. 

Using electronic medical records (EMR) to automatically send alerts is changing how we provide care. Does a patient truly have a blood pressure that needs attention or is the first reading high due to what is known as a "white coat syndrome" when people are nervous or anxious at a doctor's office. Now the EMR will prompt a re-doing of a patient's blood pressure to see if there really is an issue.

Another prompt that is having significant impact on a patient's quality of life after leaving the hospital is a prompt to a nurse care manager who is notified about where the patient is and can immediately follow up. "We have taken basic performance improvement techniques and used them and imprinted them on our providers. We have shown them their data and forced action plans. We are set up to institutionalize changes quickly. We have the structure to do that now," shares Jim Raczek, MD, EMMC's chief medical officer.