CareSTL Health has to conserve resources. As a federally qualified health center (FQHC) in St. Louis, MO, CareSTL Health serves people with no insurance. Patients often have trouble getting access to health cares services, suffer from serious illnesses, and need a lot of reassurance and communication to establish trust. Analytics in their eClinicalWorks EHR helps this front-line organization in several ways, according to Chief Medical Officer Hari Nallapaneni, M.D.
CareSTL, for example, makes use of the new AI-powered tool from eClinicalWorks that can help identify patients who are a most likely to miss their appointment (ie: no-shows). Missed appointments disrupt workflows, wastes precious resources, and takes away an appointment time that could have gone to someone else in the community who needed it. With the no-show AI module, CareSTL can now focus their appointment interventions on specific patients identified by the algorithm.
When these patients are identified, CareSTL staff reach out to remind them of their appointments, offer to reeschedule them to a more convenient time, or to offer transportation assistance if it turns out that was the hurdle.
CareSTL is also utilizing analytics to identify the most at-risk patients and stay in contact with them, encouraging them to come in for visits (and offering practical suport such as transportation vouchers), as well as to use apps or remote monitoring tools that can keep them healthy.
Analytics also locates where the most at-risk patients are geographically. Whereas many hospitals and clinics in areas of dire need are closing these days, CareSTL Health opens new clinics near its population.
Despite the importance of technology, Nallapaneni stresses that “the crux of health care is the doctor-patient relationship.” They succeed because they “earn the trust of the patient” by being open and “above all, giving them control.”
Watch this interview with Hari Nallapaneni MD, for more details about this FQHC and its approach to healthcare for the most needy.
Learn more about CareSTL Health: https://carestlhealth.org/
Learn more about eClinicalWorks: https://www.eclinicalworks.com/
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