How a Top-5 Next Generation ACO, Deaconess Care Integration, Continues to Improve Post-Acute Utilization via an Engaged Provider Network (Webinar Recap)

How a Top-5 Next Generation ACO (NGACO), Deaconess Care Integration, Continues to Improve Post-Acute Utilization via an Engaged Provider Network (Webinar Recap)

The Population Health Alliance hosted a webinar with Deaconess Health’s Lori Sieboldt, MD, Medical Director for Population Health and Deaconess Care Integration (DCI), their NGACO. Shelly Evans, who Manages Post-Acute Services, also participated in the webinar. Each detailed how Deaconess has partnered with Olio to actively engage with 45 post-acute providers and more than 265 post-acute caregivers, across three states to care for their DCI at-risk patients at scale.

Since 2016, DCI has ranked amongst the Top Five NGACOs in the last three performance periods. In 2018, DCI achieved $17.5 Million in Shared Savings and a 90.56% quality score. DCI’s NGACO has over 32,000 beneficiaries, and Deaconess as a whole has over 90,000 lives in some sort of risk contract that they are managing.

Deaconess continues to demonstrate innovation in their post-acute strategy during the same time period. In 2015, their cost of post-acute care spend was approximately $116 PMPM and by 2019 it has been improved to $86 PMPM.

Dr. Sieboldt and Shelly Evans, alongside Olio COO Sean Mullins, provided a step-by-step look into how Deaconess chose Olio to leverage digital technology in order to stay engaged on patient location, length of stay, readmission rates, and patient escalations across its entire post-acute network.

Here are some of the outcomes Dr. Sieboldt and Shelly Evans shared from the Deaconess partnership with Olio:

  • An immediate challenge was determining how to improve utilization across a large and diverse SNF Network. Their patients discharged across three states (3,190 miles), with multiple EMRs and needed a digital answer to this problem in order to continually improve. 
  • Medicare Claims data identified that their Medicare patients were going to 164 different SNF sites
  • One Deaconess FTE monitors all patients in Olio across the 45 SNF network and coordinates communication with the 265 post-acute caregivers.
  • DCI went active on January 1st, 2020 with Olio. After measuring Q1 2020 outcomes with Olio, DCI recognized an 8.9 day reduction in their SNF LOS, equating to significant savings ($548k) compared to their 2019 benchmark.
  • Sieboldt and Evans detailed two instances within 48 hours, how Olio was used to keep a patient safely in their facility. Deaconess quickly scheduled a NP telehealth visit through that NP’s phone to treat in place and offer acute care as a result of an Olio Patient Escalation
  • Deaconess leverages their Olio Engagement Score (OES) to monitor which SNF providers are engaging and not engaging in coordinated patient care. They are no longer waiting on claims data. DCI knows by the end of the business day how many touch points they have had and haven’t had, related to their at-risk lives.
  • Deaconess intends to scale Olio across all its patients being discharged from their system, not just their NGACO lives.
  • Dr. Sieboldt answers the question, “What’s in it for the SNFs?”

Watch the webinar

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