Improved Teamwork Boosts Asthma Management in Sartell
HealthPartners Central Minnesota Clinics (HPCMC) is a primary care clinic located in west central Minnesota. In addition to the main medical and dental clinic, they offer services at St John’s University, Well@Work clinic and HealthStation. The clinic ended 2012 with 53.1 percent of asthma patients considered to be “optimally managed.” Although the clinic had completed some training and workflow redesign, staff knew they could do more to improve the outcome for these patients. Read more.
Meeting the Home Care Needs of High-Risk Patients at Regions Hospital
Care transitions are a key area of focus to prevent avoidable hospital readmissions, and home care is an integral part of this work. Regions Hospital in St. Paul, part of ICSI member HealthPartners, identified one area that needed particular attention: high-risk patients who are unable to access home care services due to lack of insurance coverage, high deductibles or co-pays, or disqualification because they are not considered “homebound” by Medicare. In late 2011, Regions partnered with HealthPartners’ Integrated Home Care on a pilot project with congestive heart failure patients to identify and intervene in issues that may contribute to readmission Read more.
Ridgeview Medical Center Paramedics Help Make Transitions
to Home Safer
Easing the transition to home is one of the five key areas known to reduce avoidable hospital readmissions and is critical to ensuring that patients spend more nights at home in their own beds. Among the challenges patients face are multiple medications, uncertainty about follow-up care, and coordination with multiple providers, all while trying to recover from an illness or procedure. Home visits like those by Ridgeview Medical Center’s paramedics help ensure patients are on the road to recovery, not sent back to the hospital. Read more.
(November 2012) At Brown Clinic, an ICSI member in Watertown, SD, inpatient obligations at the local hospital were creating significant work-life balance challenges for physicians. The group of 18 primary care doctors provided ambulatory care in a very busy clinic setting while sharing responsibility for call management of 20+ hospital inpatients. Clinic commitments, physician age, and patient volumes were all contributing to the situation. When two physicians decided to leave the practice, it seemed to be time for a change. 
(October 2012) ICSI member Ellsworth Medical Clinic was named a 2012 Hypertension Control Champion by the Million HeartsTM initiative, a public-private effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to prevent a million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. Since 2007, the clinic’s hypertension control rate has gone from 73 to 97 percent, and it is one of only two clinics nationwide to be awarded this honor. 
(September 2012) In 2012, St. Joseph’s and St. John’s Hospitals, both part of HealthEast Care System, began using real-time patient feedback to improve the experience of patients in inpatient and outpatient mental health and addiction care units. Joe Clubb, Director of Mental Health & Addiction Care at HealthEast, describes their project. 
(July 2012) HealthEast’s Kidney Stone Institute is providing rapid expert care to patients with kidney stones. This new model of care was developed to address an identified shortcoming of emergency department care that is very effective at reversing patient symptoms, but is not sufficient to manage the full course of care needed for kidney stone patients.