If you participate in #valuebasedcare program, chances are that you have a telephonic care coordination program to help patients navigate through their care needs and healthcare system better.
But the number of patients who engage in this type of program is low, generally 3-4% (This article highlights the common pain points & pitfalls).
So, for every 100 members in a #valuebasedcare arrangement, only about 3-4 members respond to a telephonic outreach.
If you have one care coordinator (or nurse) hired for a ratio of every 10,000 members, then you are seeing results based on ~300 patients that answer the phone.
Is this a worthwhile investment? Maybe. If those 300 patients have complex care needs and you are able to help them, it may have some impact on lowering cost of care and improving quality. But more often than not, it is a ‘hit or miss’ and you have little control over who engages in a phone call.
Yet, a phone is almost a ubiquitous device. Not utilizing it to connect with patients is a missed opportunity. So, how do you maximize your reach, so more patients can benefit from this program?
There are a few tactics and strategies to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of a telephonic care coordination program –
- Start from the start: Growing up, when I’d be faced with a complex challenge and wouldn’t know where to start, this is the advice my dad would give me. To start from the start.
- For Health Plans and Employers – Include member phone number as a required field during enrollment and benefits sign-up period. It still boggles my mind on how this basic piece of information is left out. I cannot open a checking account at a bank without a phone number. How are we delivering healthcare for employees and members without the necessary phone numbers?
- Educate members on how this information will be used i.e., to help deliver important information and coordinate their care. Provide an option to opt-out. Identify how the member prefers to receive health information (email, call, text).
- For Providers and Practices: If you aren’t already, include phone number as required part of the check-in process to either obtain or verify their current phone number. And ensure you note their preferred means of communication (email, call, text).
2. Partnership and alignment between Payors and Providers – the ‘who does what’
As you enter into VBC arrangements, make sure to identify infrastructure and capabilities on both sides. Identify who will outreach to members for what type of interventions. Ex: post-discharge care coordination, complex care needs, closing care gap opportunities, etc.
The last thing a member needs is multiple care teams calling the member to coordinate on one thing. This not only avoids redundancy of efforts, but also confusion for the member.
Also, set up a process to exchange and update member contact information between Health Plans and Providers.
3. Consider texting platforms as a ‘soft intro’ –
I don’t like cold calls and calls from numbers I don’t recognize – they’re abrupt, interrupt my work day and will likely be treated as spam. If there is a voicemail, I get to it at the end of the day, and make a note to call back the following day… if I can remember.
But if there was a text with a link to schedule my services, or an appointment to speak with the nurse, I am more likely to respond as it works around my schedule.
There are AI-based texting platforms that offer this as a charged service. Consider how you might incorporate it into your workflows.
4. Risk stratify and optimize between texting and voice call: Leverage data analytics to identify the subset of the population that you want to target for different levels of risk. And set up a decision tree on what members are likely to respond to which method of outreach. Or you could implement a stepwise progression, starting with text followed by phone call.
If you run or partner with a telephonic care coordination program, what other strategies have you found helpful to maximize value from the effort?