November 2, 2022
Dr. Jen Brull, Vice President of Clinical Engagement at Aledade, recently hosted a webinar featuring physicians from two Aledade member practices – Dr. David Kuo from Utah Physicians Care Center, and Dr. Charles Catania from PentaHealth – where they discussed the secrets behind their MSSP success in performance year 2021.
The common theme behind their success? Working with Aledade to identify gaps their practices were facing and implementing solutions to address these problems.
For Dr. Kuo and Utah Physicians Care Centers, Aledade’s playbook proved to be most valuable in bringing together physicians from various specialties to focus on what’s most important.
“What do a bunch of internists, infectious disease doctors and diabetologists have in common? They don’t really, but we went by the playbook of what Aledade told us which was to focus on the Core 4: doing annual wellness visits, and talking to patients when they get out of the hospital and the ER.
“How many patients get out of the clinic and walk out the door when they had high blood pressure that we didn’t address because we were focused on their five other problems? Aledade gave us some tips on how to identify patients easier and recognize more rigorously how we track these patients. I think we all felt we were doing well, but if you’re not really keeping score, you’re not really doing as well as you think you are,” Dr. Kuo said.
In 2021, Utah Physicians Care Centers had 90 percent blood pressure control among their patient population and 100 percent A1C control.*
Dr. Catania shared an instance during his first year working with Aledade that transformed PentaHealth’s operations to improve patient care.
“In year one, we were trying to figure out what time our patients were going to the emergency room. We figured out that the patients were going to the emergency room from 4-9 p.m. each night, and we got that information through Aledade. A lot of offices were doing their walk-in hours in the morning. Well, we switched our walk-in hours and were now open later in the evenings from 4-8 p.m. so a lot of those patients that were utilizing the ER during that time were now coming to our walk-in clinics,” Dr. Catania said.
With the help of Aledade, PentaHealth has been able to implement this and many other changes that helped them achieve a quality score of 100 percent and complete 90 percent of ED outreach within seven days or less in 2021.*
The biggest benefactors of these successes are the patients in these practices. “Patients love it honestly…I think patients love the fact that we’re more involved in their care,” said Dr. Kuo. Dr. Catania agreed, adding, “Patients really do want to come to their doctor in order to stay healthy or stay out of the emergency room and to prevent that hospitalization or readmission, so I think a true measure of our success is the patient buy-in in what we’re doing on an everyday basis.”
Watch the full webinar here to learn more about how Aledade can help you transform your practice and earn shared sharings.
Learn more about how Aledade’s member primary care practices proved remarkably steady in generating better care and improved health outcomes in 2021 here.
*Metrics based on past performance. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Shared savings revenue is not guaranteed.