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CommonSpirit Health Leads in Improving Quality and Outcomes for Patients

CommonSpirit Health Leads in Improving Quality and Outcomes for Patients while Reducing Medicare Spending by $70 Million.

16 Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs realized $37 million in earned savings by providing high-quality value-based care to all

Chicago, Ill.—September 14, 2020—CommonSpirit Health, a nonprofit health system operating in 21 states, today announced that it earned $37 million in shared savings for the 2019 performance year, its performance-based share of $70 million in savings to Medicare. As evidence of CommonSpirit’s commitment to providing the best in value-based care, the system’s 16 accountable care organizations (ACOs) participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) also scored a quality average score of 94%.

"CommonSpirit Health is a growing community of healers and leaders building a high-performing population health engine for success in value-based payment programs,” said Bruce Swartz, Executive Vice President, Physician Enterprise for CommonSpirit Health. ” Our ACOs and clinical leaders are an essential driver of this strategy, demonstrating a clear commitment to compassion across the continuum of care by building strong relationships with our patients, proactively supporting their health and wellbeing in their communities, and modeling financial stewardship for sustainability."

Overall, the 16 ACOs improved care outcomes for approximately 321,000 Medicare beneficiaries. Through proactive engagement of vulnerable patients and a suite of innovative programs to address unmet medical, behavioral, and social needs, CommonSpirit’s ACOs reduced short-term inpatient hospital admissions and emergency department visits by 1%, long-term inpatient hospital stays by 21%, and increased primary care services by 2%.

Sixty-three percent of CommonSpirit’s MSSP ACOs, or 10 out of 16, generated savings for Medicare. Fifty-six percent received shared savings payments. The ACOs achieved the following:

• Rainier Health Network in Washington state reduced short-term inpatient hospitalizations by 2%, scored 96% on quality, and saved Medicare $20.8 million.

• Arkansas Health Network reduced short-term inpatient hospitalizations and emergency department visits by 2%, scored 92% on quality, and saved Medicare $12.9 million.

• Baylor St. Luke’s Health Network in Texas reduced MRI events by 4%, scored 92% on quality, and saved Medicare $10.8 million.

• Alegant Health Partners in Nebraska reduced inpatient hospitlizations by 4% and emergency department visits by 8%, scored 93% on quality, and saved Medicare $10.4 million.

• St. Rose Quality Care Network (NV), North State Quality Care Network (CA), Mission Health Care Network (TN), MercyOne ACOs (Iowa), and CHI Saint Joseph Health Partners (KY) also together saved Medicare $19 million.

CommonSpirit Health’s ACOs and clinically-integrated networks care for these Medicare ACO patients as part of the system’s much broader population of 2.4 million attributed patients under public and private value-based agreements – making CommonSpirit a leader among the nation’s value-based health systems.

About CommonSpirit Health:

CommonSpirit Health is a nonprofit, Catholic health system dedicated to advancing health for all people. It was created in February 2019 through the alignment of Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health. CommonSpirit Health is committed to creating healthier communities, delivering exceptional patient care, and ensuring every person has access to quality health care. With a team of approximately 150,000 employees and 25,000 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, CommonSpirit Health operates 137 hospitals and more than 1000 care sites across 21 states. In FY 2019, Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health had combined revenues of nearly $29 billion and provided $4.45 billion in charity care, community benefit, and unreimbursed government programs. Learn more at www.commonspirit.org

CommonSpirit Health Closes Care Gaps

CommonSpirit Health Closes Care Gaps with Personalized, Community-Based Care Navigation in Partnership with Docent Health.

CommonSpirit Health, a nonprofit health system serving patients in 137 hospitals and 1000+ care sites across 21 states, and Docent Health are expanding their virtual care navigator program to build on the program’s success in improving health outcomes for maternity and orthopedic patients. Docent Health is a leader in consumer engagement and patient navigation technology and services. Partners since 2016, the virtual care navigtion program has paired patients with care navigators who are in and of CommonSpirit’s communities and provide individualized guidance to patients.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has stated that achieving health equity and driving improvements for all patients requires further investment in tools that address social determinants and close care gaps. CMS notes that social determinants of health – including housing, transportation, education, social isolation, and more – affect minorities in particular, and negatively impact access to care and health outcomes. However, even with the recent attention on racial injustice and the correlation to poor health, CMS finds efforts to lessen these inequities often reach a fraction of the population, perhaps as few as two percent of all patients. Both payers and providers cite outdated tools, resource complexity, and bandwidth constraints as factors limiting their ability to elevate support for social determinants.

Docent Health’s engagement model captures and aligns numerous unique patient attributes and maps CommonSpirit’s resources to those of local, community-based organizations. The program will expand not only geographically to include more of CommonSpirit’s care sites across the country, but the virtual care navigators will also improve continuity of care among the health system’s hospitals and extend to primary care practices, behavioral health specialists, and community-based organizations.

“We simply cannot place enough value on the improvements we’ve seen in our patients’ health as a result of the individualized, community-based navigator partners who augment the work of our clinical teams,” said Alisahah Cole, MD, system vice president of population health innovation and policy at CommonSpirit Health. “The real-time capabilities from Docent Health’s platform take away much of the burden of care coordination, allowing us to scale services, which is particularly important for vulnerable or underserved patients in CommonSpirit’s communities. We are excited to bring Docent Health’s human-centric model to more of our patients with complex care needs.”

Using artificial intelligence to analyze care data, Docent Health’s platform can quickly coordinate personalized care by predicting and generating the right referrals into CommonSpirit’s workflows. Together, the technology and care navigator partners individualize support and proactively guide patients to local resources, educational programs, and care preparation. The multi-language cloud-based navigation platform interprets unique patient attributes in real-time to streamline interactions with the patient such as reminders, phone calls or text notifications, resource recommendations, and surveys, in addition to sending tasks out to care navigators and clinical care teams.

CommonSpirit and Docent Health are expanding their partnership based in part on the results of a multi-year study that quantified how Docent Health’s innovative technology and human care navigator program has successfully improved patient outcomes. The model also lowered the cost of care across all patient types, including among vulnerable populations and specifically for Medicaid patients. The study included more than 10,000 of CommonSpirit’s patients and found:

Maternity Patients:

New mothers had a 10 percent shorter average length of stay (2.29 vs. 2.46 days)

Medicaid neonates with complications had a 1.8-day shorter length of stay (4.3 vs. 6.13 days)

There was a 37 percent reduction in pre-term births for mothers on Medicaid (7.5 percent vs. 11.9 percent)

Orthopedic Patients:

Orthopedic patients had a 45 percent shorter average length of stay (1.93 vs. 3.5 days)

30-day readmission rates for orthopedic patients were 71 percent lower (1 percent vs. 3.5 percent)

“As an industry, we’ve known that community-based culturally responsive programs work but we’ve lacked the technology to deliver them cost-effectively, at scale. Our tech-enabled approach is driving better outcomes for physicians and helping to build trust and engagement, and improve health in the communities that need the support the most,” said Royal Tuthill, co-founder and president of Docent Health. “We are honored to continue our work with CommonSpirit to address health inequities in more of their communties, which is especially needed during this challenging time.”

The virtual care navigator model has led to more comprehensive support for patients with complex health care needs, and ensures a greater degree of care continuity. An internal reseach study analyzed data related to 10,220 of CommonSpirit’s patients between the years 2016 and 2018. Over sixty percent of patients in the research study were either Medicaid or Medicare patients, and were from a mix of urban, suburban, and rural communities. CommonSpirit’s study controlled for numerous variables, including age, race and ethnicity, and physician.

The collaboration is expected to extend Docent Health’s care navigation technology and services across 11 states and more than 60 of CommonSpirit’s care sites.

About CommonSpirit Health

CommonSpirit Health is a nonprofit, Catholic health system dedicated to advancing health for all people. It was created in February 2019 through the alignment of Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health. With its national office in Chicago and a team of approximately 125,000 employees and 25,000 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, CommonSpirit Health operates 137 hospitals and more than 1000 care sites across 21 states. In FY 2020, Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health had combined revenues of nearly $29.6 billion and provided $4.6 billion in charity care, community benefit, and unreimbursed government programs. Learn more at www.commonspirit.org.

About Docent Health

Docent Health is a venture-backed healthcare experience technology and services company focused on helping healthcare organizations transform and truly embrace a consumer-centric approach to healthcare. The company’s mission-driven platform and services combine digital and human interactions to guide customers on journeys tailored to their specific needs and preferences. By utilizing Docent Health’s platform, health systems and payors can provide personalized, empathetic experiences at scale and support a multitude of complex care pathways. For more information, visit www.docenthealth.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn

CommonSpirit Health is Awarded Over $2.1 Million

CommonSpirit Health is Awarded Over $2.1 Million to Improve Treatment of Substance Use and Mental Health Disorders in Hospital Emergency Departments.

The Enterprise Population Health team is excited to announce that CommonSpirit Health is an award recipient of over $2.1 million from the California Department of Health Care Services to build capacity for improved treatment of substance use disorder and mental health disorders in hospital emergency departments. This funding will allow CommonSpirit Health (CSH) hospitals to expand the CA BRIDGE model from 11 to 25 CSH hospitals, helping vulnerable patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) connect to and gain access to life-saving treatments for their addiction. Dr. Julian Mitton, System Director for Population Health Policy at CommonSpirit Health, stresses that “opioid use disorder is a treatable chronic disease of the brain that requires long-term supportive treatment, including medications for addiction treatment (MAT) such as buprenorphine.” The CA BRIDGE model has been celebrated as a best-practice addiction care innovation. At its core, the model is about increasing access to evidence-based addiction care for patients with OUD through proactive outreach, patient navigation, and provider education. Thanks to this funding opportunity, this model will now be available in over 90% of CSH hospitals in California.

Many patients, in critical times of need and vulnerability, turn to our emergency rooms for help, and the CA BRIDGE model helps connect those individuals to resources and support to continue on a path to recovery. Behavioral health counselors navigate patients through an often complicated care network. The program staff also proactively addresses systemic barriers due to stigma and health inequities by advocating for patients in their holistic needs for recovery and promoting changes in clinical care through provider education. “[The BRIDGE program] is about more than just offering treatment,” says Dr. Alicia Kurtz, emergency medicine physician and Medical Director at Marian Regional Medical Center, “it’s also fostering a complete culture change within the house of medicine in how we think about and approach patients with substance use issues.”

Candace Fong, CSH System Vice President for Medication Safety, highlights that the award funding will help expand access to evidence-based addiction treatment by “reaching patients using innovative approaches in telemedicine and virtual peer support.” The Covid-19 pandemic has only complicated the way care is provided for individuals with substance use disorder, with patients feeling more isolated from their support structures, trying to manage increased stress, or struggling to access reliable care given ongoing needs for social distancing. But work is being done across the CSH enterprise to address these barriers and added challenges, by “expediting access to MAT programs [and other addiction services] in ways we previously had been unable to do for our patients,” Dr. Fong continues. The CA BRIDGE model is leading the charge on many of these innovations.

Beyond the emergency room, as a Catholic-based health system, CSH is committed to providing compassionate, evidence-based care to patients with addiction by meeting patients in their time of need. Through innovative population health efforts, CSH also aims to take proactive steps to reduce harm from drug use, routinely screen patients for substance use disorder, and change our clinical care model to reduce stigma and provide holistic care “This work aligns with CSH’s vision to create a healthier future for all. We are striving to eliminate disparities of care through strategic and intentional work to eradicate the systematic exclusion that many of our patients face on a day to day basis”, says Dr. Alisahah Cole, System Vice President for Population Health Innovation and Policy. “Our mission is to improve the health of the people we serve, especially those who are vulnerable and this program gives us the opportunity to help people in their greatest time of need.”