Access and communication: These are two keys to reducing costly readmissions and emergency department (ED) visits.
Sumir Sahgal, M.D., founder and chief medical officer for the Bronx, New York-based Essen Health Care, highlighted the challenges of access to appropriate, timely care in a Newsweek article. Dr. Sahgal talks about why it’s so important for primary care physicians to build a bond with their patients.
This is especially true with medically underserved populations, he notes.
A virtual assistant helps increase ongoing patient outreach
MyndYou’s AI-enabled virtual assistant, Eleanor, can help providers reduce these costly ED visits by increasing touchpoints with patients and their primary care physicians, specialists, and other care team members in between visits. She talks to high- and rising-risk patients in a natural, conversational tone and a friendly voice about their health. She can call patients regularly to check in and when she identifies a clinically relevant event, she flags them so the care team can intervene.
By creating an ongoing relationship with patients, Eleanor complements the work of the care team. She’s able to identify issues that a patient might not think are important enough to warrant a call to their PCP to schedule a visit.
For example, by analyzing speech and listening for keywords, Eleanor can detect if a patient is feeling dizzy. That might not seem important to the patient. But Eleanor alerts the care team before that dizzy spell becomes a fall and an ED visit or hospital admission.
In one program, Eleanor detected an immediate readmission risk in 14 percent of 1,500 patients participating in a 30-day monitoring program. Those calls were elevated to the care team for rapid intervention.
Reducing cost of care
As Dr. Sahgal points out in the article, the average cost for treat-and-release care in EDs is 10-12 times higher than a visit to an urgent care clinic or a PCP office. And the number of people using the ED for urgent rather than emergency care is on the rise.
By identifying emerging risk early, physicians and their staff can direct patients into their office or to a lower-care cost setting. In one MyndYou program, 38% of patients who were flagged as needing care received follow-up care at an urgent care facility, reducing ED use.
“A patient-focused primary/integrated care model can alleviate the challenges of limited access,” Dr. Sahgal writes. Eleanor can be one component of an integrated program that helps increase the provider-patient relationship, build trust, and ultimately reduce avoidable healthcare costs.
