Health IT, Hospitals, Patient Engagement, Startups

Can engaging primary care doctors reduce healthcare costs?

Updated: A couple of the pain points driving up healthcare costs are poor adherence to […]

Updated: A couple of the pain points driving up healthcare costs are poor adherence to care plans and self-referrals to specialists. Health IT startup Amplify Health wants to change that by getting primary care physicians to do a better job of engaging their patients. Chris DeNoia, the vice president of business development, told MedCity News that its platform is designed to give primary care physicians a better way to steer their patient populations and influence behavior.

Physicians get a dashboard that uses claims data to give them an analysis of their patients — their health, whether they are going outside of their network and whether they are adhering to their care plan. The company offers feedback on deviations from adherence plans and sees a niche for itself in the future of healthcare.

“We can show doctors the results of actions and interactions with patients,” DeNoia said. The idea is to help physicians do a better job of engaging patients.

Although poor adherence is regarded as a big source of unnecessary medical expenses, many programs lack the ability to correlate physician actions with patient activities, said DeNoia.

As a for instance, DeNoia cites self-referrals to specialists. That just doesn’t work in a post Affordable Care Act world that seeks to reign in healthcare costs.

“There may be a valid reason, but they need a referral,” said DeNoia. “We start with the premise that primary care physicians are very good at providing care plans, but not very good at serving patients beyond the four walls of their offices.”

Amplify Health was founded by Eric Page who previously was co-founder of REM Medical. The sleep apnea patients at the sleep clinic tended to have poor adherence for the CPAP machines they were prescribed, despite their medical benefits. To change that, it combined behavioral insights with technology and doubled the industry average adherence to 79 percent.

Don’t get DeNoia started on concierge care. He thinks that’s a terrible idea. “It’s a patient access model and it’s inefficient because we have a highly skilled person doing tasks that don’t require that skill level.”

In addition to primary care practices, its customers also include patient-centered medical homes and accountable care organizations.

[Photo credit: Two heads by BigStock Photo]

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