Study: Patient Alerts Improve Compliance
 
ActiveHealth Management recently announced the publication of a study in the November issue of The American Journal of Managed Care that measured the incremental impact of sending clinical alerts to patients, as well as their physicians. The study demonstrated that clinical alerts based on evidence-based medical guidelines were followed at a greater rate when they were sent to both patients and their physicians compared to when they were sent to physicians alone.

ActiveHealth’s clinical alerts, called Care Considerations, communicate gaps in care, potential medical errors, and opportunities to improve care. They are derived from the CareEngine System, ActiveHealth’s patented clinical decision support technology. The CareEngine continuously gathers the medical, pharmacy, and laboratory claims data for members and compares it against the latest findings in evidence-based literature. Care Considerations were initially only sent to physicians. In 2006, ActiveHealth started communicating Care Considerations to patients.

Highlights of the study results include the following:
 
• Sending Care Considerations to patients increased compliance by 12.5%.
 
• Care Considerations recommending screening, diagnostic, and monitoring tests experienced the greatest increase in compliance (26.4% compared with the control group).

This 12-month, randomized study compared overall change in compliance with Care Considerations in a baseline year (2005) and a study year (2006). The study group consisted of four large employers (combined membership over 100,000) that contracted with ActiveHealth to start sending Care Considerations to patients in addition to physicians in January 2006. The control group consisted of 28 large employers (combined membership over 700,000) that continued with physician Care Considerations but did not add patient Care Considerations. Compliance with Care Considerations was based on claims evidence that the suggested action, such as taking test, filling a prescription or getting a vaccination, was carried out within a pre-defined time window.

“Our study concluded that adding patient-focused clinical alerts to a system of physician alerts improves overall compliance with evidence-based guidelines,” says Stephen Rosenberg, MD, MPH, the lead author of the study and senior vice president of Outcomes Research at ActiveHealth. “The increased compliance may be attributed to two possible scenarios. First, alerts serve as a reminder to patients of instructions already given to them by their physicians, making it more likely that they fill prescriptions or get recommended tests. It is also possible that member-directed alerts are independently prompting patients to discuss specific clinical issues with their physicians. In any case, this dynamic enhances patient safety and accelerates the application of evidence-based standards of care.”

Source: ActiveHealth Management

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