Page 35 - Bexar County Medical Society Purchasing Directory

UTHSCSA

tices discuss care gaps. To ensure gaps are addressed either in
person or virtually by members of the team, personalized care
plans are developed for each patient. Every morning, a practice
access teleconference ensures patients with acute needs are seen
in a timely fashion. All this activity is supported by a health in-
formation technology infrastructure that collects and reports
data on care gaps in real-time.
“We worked closely with our clinical leaders to develop our
electronic health record workflows and dashboards that allow
us to deliver value-based care to our patients seamlessly,” said
Timothy barker, M.d., chief medical information officer at UT
Health Physicians.
The integrated local and central workflows allow clinicians
time to deliver patient care.
“We feel we have a lot of support around us, which allows
us to focus on caring for the patient in front of us,” said david
Cadena, M.d., a UT Health Physicians family medicine clini-
cian.
The model of care the ACO will deliver has attracted interest
from non-UT Health San Antonio physicians as well. The UT
Health Physicians group is developing relationships with com-
munity physicians; many are attracted to the Regional Physi-
cians Network model of care and will join it as ACO
participants. ACO participants will have the opportunity to uti-
lize the same patient care resources, have direct access to UT
Health Physicians specialists, as well as have access to ACO ed-
ucational events. The participants will also have the opportunity
leaders and stakeholders were involved in this process,” said Carlos to receive a portion of any of the shared savings that the Regional
Rosende, M.d., executive director of UT Health Physicians. Physicians Network would gain.
“We continually engage all our medical directors and clinical lead-
ers in our decision-making,” said bob leverence, M.d., chief med- What lies ahead
ical officer for UT Health Physicians. Ultimately, the goal of all this work is to make sure patients re-
The focus on clinician and stakeholder engagement resulted in ceive the best evidence-based care at the right time. The value-based
an enhanced, integrated patient care experience that builds on the care model (and the ACOs that will deliver this care to patients) is
practice plan’s experience as a patient-centered medical home. Pa- a step toward this goal. value-based care aligns actions that make
tients have their own personal primary care physician and can in- sense to physicians and patients—such as improving blood pressure
teract with their medical home virtually through an online portal, and decreasing hospital readmissions—with incentives. While the
which allows patients the ability to see test results, medications and U.S. has a long history of restructuring itself and its health care to
their visit histories. meet the Triple Aim, recent evidence that suggests billions of dol-
Another layer of personal care exists for ACO patients. lars were saved by the Medicare Shared Savings Plan ACOs may
“Our primary care and specialist teams and leaders helped de- mean that we are closer than we have ever been to the goal.
velop workflows, which we use in daily interactions with patients
either in person or virtually,” said Kenyatta lee, M.d., chief quality Ramon Cancino, M.D., M.Sc. is director of primary care for UT Health
officer for UT Health Physicians. Physicians, the medical practice of the Long School of Medicine at UT Health
local and central teams work together to review every patient San Antonio, and medical director at UT Health Hill Country. As an assis-
with a daily emphasis on identifying gaps in quality metrics. In ad- tant professor and primary care physician, he also is part of the UT Health
dition, each afternoon, representatives from all primary care prac- Regional Physicians Network. He can be reached at cancinor@uthsca.edu.

visit us at www.bcms.org 35