Cost, Utilization, and Patient and Family Experience With ACO-Based Pediatric Care Management.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs have high healthcare utilization, fragmented care, and unmet health needs. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) increasingly use pediatric care management to improve quality and reduce unnecessary utilization. We evaluated effects of pediatric care management on total medical expense (TME) and utilization; perceived quality of care coordination, unmet needs, and patient and family experience; and differential impact by payor, risk score, care manager discipline, and behavioral health diagnosis. METHODS: Mixed-methods analysis including claims using quasi-stepped-wedge design pre and postenrollment to estimate difference-in-differences, participant survey, and semistructured interviews. Participants included 1321 patients with medical, behavioral, or social needs, high utilization, in Medicaid or commercial ACOs, and enrolled in multidisciplinary, primary care-embedded care management. RESULTS: TME significantly declined 1 to 6 months postenrollment and continued through 19 to 24 months (-$645.48 per member per month, P < .001). Emergency department and inpatient utilization significantly decreased 7 to 12 months post-enrollment and persisted through 19 to 24 months (-29% emergency department, P = .012; -82% inpatient, P < .001). Of respondents, 87.2% of survey respondents were somewhat or very satisfied with care coordination, 56.1% received education coordination when needed, and 81.5% had no unmet health needs. Emergency department or inpatient utilization decreases were consistent across payors and care manager disciplines, occurred sooner with behavioral health diagnoses, and were significant among children with above-median risk scores. Satisfaction and experience were equivalent across groups, with more unmet needs and frustration with above-median risk scores. CONCLUSIONS: Pediatric care management in multipayor ACOs may effectively reduce TME and utilization and clinically provide high-quality care coordination, including education and family stress, with high participant satisfaction.

Relationship among team dynamics, care coordination and perception of safety culture in primary care.

Background: There remains a need to improve patient safety in primary care settings. Studies have demonstrated that creating high-performing teams can improve patient safety and encourage a safety culture within hospital settings, but little is known about this relationship in primary care. Objective: To examine how team dynamics relate to perceptions of safety culture in primary care and whether care coordination plays an intermediating role. Research Design: This is a cross-sectional survey study with 63% response (n = 1082). Subjects: The study participants were attending clinicians, resident physicians and other staff who interacted with patients from 19 primary care practices affiliated with Harvard Medical School. Main Measures: Three domains corresponding with our main measures: team dynamics, care coordination and safety culture. All items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale. We used linear regression clustered by practice site to assess the relationship between team dynamics and perceptions of safety culture. We also performed a mediation analysis to determine the extent to which care coordination explains the relationship between perceptions of team dynamics and of safety culture. Results: For every 1-point increase in overall team dynamics, there was a 0.76-point increase in perception of safety culture [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.70-0.82, P < 0.001]. Care coordination mediated the relationship between team dynamics and the perception of safety culture. Conclusion: Our findings suggest there is a relationship between team dynamics, care coordination and perceptions of patient safety in a primary care setting. To make patients safer, we may need to pay more attention to how primary care providers work together to coordinate care.

Using a Self-Reported Global Health Measure to Identify Patients at High Risk for Future Healthcare Utilization.

BACKGROUND: Research studies have shown that patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) that assess global health are helpful for predicting health care utilization, but less evidence exists that collection of PROMs in routine care can identify patients with high health care needs. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between the PROMIS Global Health (PGH) scores and subsequent health care utilization among patients in a large accountable care organization (ACO). DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study of individuals in the Partners HealthCare ACO who completed at least one PGH during a primary care visit. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 2639 individuals who completed at least one PGH and who also had 12 months of ACO membership and/or claims data prior to the PROM completion and at least one month of claims data post-PGH completion. MAIN MEASURES: The main outcomes were the rates of emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations by quartile of PGH physical and mental health scores. We also compared the predictive accuracy of administrative data models with and without the PGH scores to identify the highest utilizers. KEY RESULTS: The group with the worst (lowest) physical and mental health scores had significantly higher rates of hospitalization (RR 5.14, 95% CI 2.37, 11.15; and 2.27, 95% CI 1.06, 4.85, respectively) than those with higher scores. After adjustment for demographic and clinical factors, only the group with lower physical health scores had higher rates of hospitalization (RR 3.15, 95% CI 1.30, 7.90). The addition of the physical health subscore to administrative data increased the sensitivity to detect the top 5% of hospital utilizers compared with administrative data alone (44.0% vs. 36.0% respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Worse self-reported physical health, measured during routine primary care, is associated with significantly higher rates of hospitalization. It is not associated with increased rates of ED visits. Self-reported physical health modestly increases the sensitivity to detect the highest hospital utilizers.

Medicaid incentive programs to encourage healthy behavior show mixed results to date and should be studied and improved.

In September 2011 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded $85 million in grants to ten states to test financial incentive programs to encourage healthy behavior among Medicaid enrollees with chronic diseases. There is little published evidence about the effectiveness of such incentives within the Medicaid program. We evaluated the available research from three earlier Medicaid incentive programs and found mixed results. On the one hand, in Florida only about half of the $41.3 million in available credits was "claimed" by enrollees between 2006 and 2011. On the other, Idaho's incentive program was credited with improving the proportion of children who were up-to-date on well-child visits. Our findings suggest that Medicaid incentive programs should be designed so that enrollees can understand them and so that the incentives are attractive enough to motivate participation. Medicaid incentive programs also should be subject to rigorous evaluation to more clearly establish their effectiveness.

Changes in glycemic control from 1996 to 2006 among adults with type 2 diabetes: a longitudinal cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Our objectives were to examine temporal changes in HbA1c and lipid levels over a 10-year period and to identify predictors of metabolic control in a longitudinal patient cohort. METHODS: We identified all adults within our hospital network with T2DM who had HbA1c's measured in both 1996 and 2006 (longitudinal cohort). For patients with no data in 2006, we used hospital and social security records to distinguish patients lost to follow-up from those who died after 1996. We compared characteristics of the 3 baseline cohorts (longitudinal, lost to f/u, died) and examined metabolic trends in the longitudinal cohort. RESULTS: Of the 4944 patients with HbA1c measured in 1996, 1772 (36%) had an HbA1c measured in 2006, 1296 (26%) were lost to follow-up, and 1876 (38%) had died by 2006. In the longitudinal cohort, mean HbA1c decreased by 0.4 +/- 1.8% over the ten-year span (from 8.2% +/- 1.7% to 7.8% +/- 1.4%) and mean total cholesterol decreased by 49.3 (+/- 46.5) mg/dL. In a multivariate model, independent predictors of HbA1c decline included older age (OR 1.41 per decade, 95% CI: 1.3-1.6, p < 0.001), baseline HbA1c (OR 2.9 per 1% increment, 2.6 - 3.2, p < 0.001), and speaking English (OR 2.1, 1.4-3.1, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Despite having had diabetes for an additional 10 years, patients in our longitudinal cohort had better glycemic and cholesterol control in 2006 than 1996. Greatest improvements occurred in patients with the highest levels in the baseline year.