Pharmaceutical market access vice presidents, executive directors, market access marketing, and brand leads:
We recently discussed the change in the organized provider (large community practices and health systems) business model, which is evolving to growth strategies intensely focused on operational excellence, differentiation through high-satisfaction patient/member experience, and innovation through new capabilities. High-performing provider organizations are achieving these goals, in part, through standardized care plans.
Provider Organizations Help Teams Deliver Quality Care
While the pandemic skyrocketed the use of technology in health care delivery, other irrevocable realities garnered less focus yet are equally critical. These realities, when coupled with these advances in technology, have accelerated the speed of change in the health care industry.
Here’s an example of one reality: There are 800,000 journal articles published every year, and we double what we know in medicine every 73 days. Meanwhile, new data capabilities mean that payers, stop-loss carriers, and medical malpractice entities are increasingly able to evaluate the quality of care delivered by individual physicians and provider organizations. Add these mega-trends together and the result is an existential need for provider organizations, at the practice level, to help their clinical teams deliver best-practice evidence-based care.
Standardizing Care Is Essential
While there are a number of factors in play when it comes to improving efficiency and quality across time and entire patient populations, it is inarguable that care must be standardized at some level. Certainly, every patient is an individual; but every individual is a human—and there are basic truths, precepts, and research for what good care includes and constitutes at different points in the care journey and for differing diagnoses.
High-performing provider organizations almost always proactively support clinicians and patients with evidence-based care plans, sometimes called pathways. Without consistent use of care plans across any given practice, the quality of care will always regress to the mean. What this means, borne out by any number of mathematical algorithms, is that without effective care standardization, the average of care will always be the top of the bell curve, hovering around 65% to 70% of any given measure.
Some have asked why a poor use of care plans inevitably results in lackluster performance. The answer is because there will always be great physicians (the 95 percenters) and not-so-great physicians (the 45 percenters). Raising the average means deploying care standards that push up poor performers.
But those great performers? Consider this: They probably use some form of care plans themselves whether they realize it or not. Otherwise, they would not be consistently great. Furthermore, team-based care is becoming commonplace; and every team needs a playbook—otherwise known as a book of care plans that everyone on the team synchronizes their efforts around.
To learn about Aventria’s OGE® Care Plan solution and how we can help you deploy with confidence this proven technology platform that may strengthen your collaborations with organized providers, please reach out to:
Dave Dierk, Co-President, 30-year sales and marketing thought leader in pharmaceutical diagnostics, biomedical, long-term care, managed care, employer, and pharmacy communications, at dave.dierk@aventriahealth.com.
Paul G. Pochtar, RPh, 25+ years of experience in leading the successful commercialization of both primary care and specialty pharmaceuticals throughout their life cycle, including several landmark oncology products and other specialty therapeutics, at ppochtar@pinnaclehc.com.
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