California residents to reap benefits of CHI and xG partnership

Residents of California's Central Coast will soon reap the benefits of a newly formed healthcare partnership that aims to advance quality while driving down costs thanks to an innovative healthcare delivery model known as the patient-centered medical home.

Community Health Innovations (CHI), a subsidiary of Community Hospital Foundation, the nonprofit parent company of Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, has announced a partnership with xG Health Solutions, a startup launched in February 2013 by Geisinger Health System that provides Geisinger's intellectual property and expertise to other healthcare systems around the globe.

Geisinger, a Danville, Pennsylvania-based health system, is frequently held up as a national model for developing and implementing advanced healthcare delivery models — including ProvenHealth Navigator®, Geisinger's patient-centered medical home — to improve outcomes and reduce healthcare costs all while cutting down on hospital readmissions.

"At Community Health Innovations, we are committed to enhancing the patient care experience, improving the health of the community, and reducing the cost of care," said Chief Operating Officer Liz Lorenzi. "We recognized in xG that we both share a conviction that integrating real-time clinical data with historical data allows us to make smarter, evidenced-based decisions in regards to our patients and therefore, our patients receive the best possible care."

The foundation of the CHI and xG partnership will be Geisinger's ProvenHealth Navigator, which leverages health information technology and is credited with reducing avoidable hospitalizations by 18 percent and avoidable readmissions by 24 percent, according to 2011 published statistics from Geisinger Health System. In addition, ProvenHealth Navigator has addressed the national health system's most costly charges by reducing by 20 percent avoidable emergency room visits by Medicare patients. These results have been replicated by xG Health and Geisinger at unaffiliated hospitals in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

"The centerpiece of this new relationship will be the use of predictive analytics which will drive quality of care, administrative efficiency, and innovation on a number of healthcare fronts," according to xG's Chief Executive Officer Earl Steinberg, MD. "ProvenHealth Navigator is a perfect example of how the use of predictive analytics can ultimately be used to drive innovation in healthcare."

ProvenHealth Navigator utilizes a team-based approach — engaging the patient, primary care physician, nurses, care manager, pharmacists and other healthcare providers — to improve care coordination and optimize the health of each individual. It includes round-the-clock primary and specialty care access, a nurse care manager to coordinate and help manage care for chronically ill patients, predictive analytics to identify risk trends, virtual care management support and a focus on proactive evidence-based care to reduce avoidable hospitalizations, promote health, empower patients to become involved in their care and optimize management of chronic disease.

"We will be working with Community Health Innovations and Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula to create a healthcare analytics system that is a closed loop. Starting with the clinical areas, we'll build an infrastructure that will allow us to put the patient and the primary care team in a position where they will drive the healthcare experience," Dr. Steinberg emphasized.

Source: Community Health Innovations