Proactive Patient Outreach system, patient registry to improve care coordination, population health outcomes

Under the HITECH Act's final rules for meaningful use issued last week by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), physicians are required to demonstrate the ability to effectively report quality data, manage care coordination, engage patients and families, and improve population health in order to qualify for federal financial incentives. Phytel, the leader in physician-led population health improvement, today announced that its Proactive Patient Outreach system and patient registry will enable physicians to meet final meaningful use guidelines in these areas, including criteria for quality reporting, patient lists, patient reminders and patient-specific education.

“Meaningful use is all about population health management and using health information technology to transform healthcare with an intense focus on quality. Phytel is helping not only in year one, but throughout the entire transition, to help keep patients involved in their care and improve outcomes.”

"With Phytel, we have been able to significantly increase care compliance with evidence-based protocols, while improving our ability to coordinate care," said C. Edward Brown, CEO at The Iowa Clinic. "Phytel has played a crucial role in bringing us an enhanced level of patient care delivery, and the technology will be critical in our efforts to achieve meaningful use requirements."

Phytel's technology helps identify gaps in care to improve care coordination and population health outcomes through integration with existing electronic medical record (EMR) and practice management (PM) systems. Phytel's patient registry extracts clinical, demographic and scheduling data from the systems, and benchmarks the data against national quality measures and outcomes to identify those patients in need of recommended preventive and chronic disease care.

Leveraging this data, Phytel sends automated messages to the identified patients to help actively engage them in the care process and ensure compliance to recommended care programs. Phytel will assist medical groups in meet several of the meaningful use objectives, including:

• Generate lists of patients by specific conditions to use for quality improvement, reduction of disparities, research, or outreach.
• Report ambulatory clinical quality measures to CMS or the States.
• Send reminders to patients per patient preference for preventive/follow-up care.
• Provide access to patient-specific educational resources.

"Phytel enhances EMRs and their ability to provide population health solutions that engage patients and help coordinate their care," said Richard Hodach, M.D., chief medical officer of Phytel. "Meaningful use is all about population health management and using health information technology to transform healthcare with an intense focus on quality. Phytel is helping not only in year one, but throughout the entire transition, to help keep patients involved in their care and improve outcomes."

SOURCE Phytel