Catholic Health Partners implements Phytel's Proactive Patient Outreach solution

Phytel today announced that Catholic Health Partners (CHP) has successfully implemented Phytel's Proactive Patient Outreach solution in its Knoxville, TN; Youngstown, OH; and Paducah, KY facilities. In 2011, Phytel technology will be implemented in these CHP regions in Ohio: Toledo, Cincinnati, Lorain and Lima. Designed to help physicians improve preventive and chronic care management, the automated care coordination and population health management technology from Phytel will support CHP initiatives focused on achieving comprehensive care coordination across its patient population.

“The Phytel system enables CHP to provide better support to physicians and their office staffs, while enhancing patient care”

Phytel's Proactive Patient Outreach system creates an electronic registry of patients who require preventive and chronic care, based on data from CHP's Epic electronic medical record and practice management systems, as well as nationally validated, evidence-based protocols. The innovative technology identifies gaps in care, triggers automated messaging about recommended visits, tests or procedures, and tracks the results. Additionally, it enables CHP to track outcomes data for quality reporting, one of the organization's key priorities.

"The Phytel system enables CHP to provide better support to physicians and their office staffs, while enhancing patient care," said Ken Bertka, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer of CHP's Northern Division in northwest Ohio. "As the Phytel system is introduced in CHP regions, we expect to see fewer patients missing appointments; this improves efficiency in our practices, but more importantly, it helps us provide better patient care."

CHP is one of the largest non-profit health systems in the U.S., with more than 100 organizations, including 34 hospitals, across Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and surrounding states. For the second year in a row, the system was named one of the Top 10 Health Systems for clinical quality and efficiency in a Thomson Reuters study.

"We applaud Catholic Health Partners for building an innovative strategy for the future based on a foundation of high quality population health principles," said Steve Schelhammer, CEO of Phytel. "By implementing Phytel's technology to automate the management of its population of patients, CHP can enable its care team to focus on patient needs before, during and after office visits. We look forward to working with CHP to implement continuous operational and patient care improvements that demonstrate the value of this new model of automated population health management."