Health Risk Assessments
Understanding the complete health risk profile of each patient is critical to delivering good care. It also provides data that is important to the overall picture of the patient when delivering interventions associated with Quality and Medical Cost programs. CURA understands what questions are important and how best to get patients to answer them. Our risk assessment technology is interactive and multi-modal (phone, text, email) and customizable by VSO, Practice, Provider, and Patient. It drives real-time actions to the care team.
Pre-visit Prep
For those patients whose complaints or overall health conditions require an office visit with the primary care physician, CURA’s visit preparation services address the full range of preparation activities, including patient information and history, medication reconciliation, and assessment of necessary pre-visit services (e.g., lab tests). CURA patient advocates, on behalf of the VSO and Provider work with the patient over the phone to update the clinical record BEFORE the patient comes into the office.
CURA conducts regular periodic reviews of the clinical and claims data to identify care and wellness gaps, including clinical screenings (e.g. colorectal exams, mammograms, etc.), general health concerns (e.g. weight management, cholesterol, exercise, etc.). These gaps will be closed either through leveraging existing appointments or through outbound communications from CURA to the patients to make them aware of their care and wellness gaps and the need to take appropriate action. Delivery of these services may be handled by physicians or other clinical staff whose capacity has been increased through leveraging of the CURA services. The continual care and wellness gap assessment dramatically assist in the delivery of higher quality clinical care. When existing appointments are leveraged, the revenue per visit per patient is increased and at the same time patient convenience is increased as multiple visits to the office are avoided. For patients without an existing appointment, this service creates additional patient visits. Increasing quality by closing gaps is key to deriving full benefit from value-based contracts.
Prescription Management
CURA uses a combination of workflow processes, technology, and communications to help manage all aspects of the prescribing process. During initial prescription writing, CURA works with currently deployed EMR technology to promote greater formulary compliance and use of generic alternatives where clinically appropriate. CURA supports and manages the use of ePrescribing to more directly pass prescriptions from providers to pharmacies. The total time expended by in-office staff in managing refills is drastically reduced as are phone calls to and from the pharmacy. Formulary compliance and use of generics should both increase under CURA management which are key drivers for a reduction in ER and hospital utilization as well as better quality outcomes.
Care Coordination and Referral Management
On behalf of the practice and the patient, Cura Health schedules referrals to specialists or diagnostic facilities. Cura Health communicates the patient’s care plan to the outside provider (or any other person designated by the patient as part of their care team) and closes the care loop by ensuring that the results of subsequent care are clearly communicated to the patient and incorporated into the patient’s medical record and care plan. These services ensure that patients remain under the control of their primary physician, and enables the physician to be aware of any other physician visits, and provides access to clinical notes and allows for easy communication between physicians.
Evidence-Based Standard Clinical Protocols
Beginning with evidence-based guidelines, CURA works with the Value Services Organization as well as individual Physicians to develop and customize baseline standardized protocols for various diagnoses and situations. Adjustments to the initial guidelines can be based on physician preference, local standards of care, and payor protocols. These protocols help identify care and wellness gaps across a patient panel and payor contract. They also allow the practice care team and CURA extenders to support the providers in delivering care to patients. The deployment of standardized care guidelines and protocols in a practice reduces clinical time researching the latest evidence-based guidelines and enables consistent standard of care. It also allows extenders to work on the physicians' behave freeing them to focus on more complex and/or high-risk patients.
Test Results Management
CURA deploys a standardized process to receive lab and other tests and specialist reports and communicate them back to the Patients. This includes EMR optimization, the establishment of protocols, and leveraging personal health records and secure messaging as well as CURA’s automatic and staffed outbound communication capabilities. The complete testing results information is obtained, processed and communicated more quickly providing for the best patient outcomes. This increases patient satisfaction and improves clinical outcomes when abnormal results need to be handled quickly. Staff time spent communicating and obtaining test result information is reduced, freeing capacity for other more valuable clinical activities.
Virtual Visit Capabilities
CURA Virtual Care Center allows credentialed clinicians to work with patients immediately over both the phone and internet. By applying evidence-based guidelines that have been customized for client partners protocols, CURA’s staff can effectively deal with dozens of low complexity acute care issues which currently result either in an unnecessary (and often unscheduled) office visit, a clinically unnecessary trip to the ER, and on-call pages to physicians. By using the CURA Virtual Care Center as an extension of the client partner’s care team, the total clinical capacity of client partners is increased, as physician time is freed from more routine, less complex interactions. At the same time, patient satisfaction is increased due to faster resolution of inbound calls, and greater access to clinical information.
Care Plan Development
CURA offers technology, tools and clinical extenders to assist providers in the preparation of care plans. These plans are anchored in evidence-based protocols and are documented in a manner that encourages their utilization by clinicians, care coordinators, caregivers, and patients.
Risk Adjustment and Quality Improvement Coding
Risk coding and understanding how risk and quality scores impact a value-based contract are key skills needed to achieve successful results. CURA brings expertise and skilled people to train as well as to conduct risk coding properly and accurately. CURA services include retrospective chart review and documentation.