Sharp Rees-Stealy Cardiovascular Program Wins 2018 Doyle Award

Medical group's use of MCG Chronic Care guidelines helps reduce Medicare patient heart attacks by 30 percent

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Dec 12, 2018, 06:00 ET

SEATTLE and SAN DIEGO, Dec. 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- MCG Health, part of the Hearst Health network and a leading provider of informed care strategies, has named Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group a recipient of the 2018 Richard L. Doyle Award.

Sharp Rees-Stealy is being recognized for using Chronic Care guidelines from MCG as a foundation for their Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Program. Focusing on Medicare patients with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and other risk factors, the program brought patients together with health professionals to create a multidisciplinary team and develop evidence-based care plans. The program lowered the rate of heart attacks by 31 percent and strokes by 15 percent, contributing to more than $7 million in avoided healthcare costs.

"The guidelines provide a common touchstone for physicians, pharmacists, case managers, health coaches, and — most of all — our patients as they seek to better understand and self-manage cardiovascular risk," said Sharp Rees-Stealy's Director of Population Health and Informatics, Janet Appel.

The team used MCG's high-intensity care and disease management guidance to shape comprehensive assessments and care plans that also consider a patient's medical, behavioral, and psychosocial well-being.

"To assess cardiovascular risk, you need good metrics. You also need to understand the patient's story," Appel said. "Knowing that a person just lost a job or is grieving a loved one can be as important as knowing their cholesterol level or latest blood pressure trends. As our care team focuses on the whole person, tools in MCG Chronic Care guidelines provide a helpful guide."

Care plans included education and coaching around diet, exercise, stress management, smoking cessation, monitoring of blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and medication adherence. Case management — supported by telemedicine and wireless blood pressure monitoring — helped maintain high patient engagement. Aspirin adherence, for example, rose from 73 percent to 88 percent, while other hypertension medication adherence rose from 83 percent to 98 percent.

"Managing chronic disease is one of our healthcare system's greatest challenges," said MCG President Jon Shreve. "Taking an evidence-based, population health approach to cardiovascular risk, Sharp Rees-Stealy has improved the quality of people's lives while saving valuable resources. We're proud to have them as a partner."

Sharp Rees-Stealy's program received three years of funding under a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) initiative tasked with testing population health management strategies that both reduce heart disease risk and save healthcare costs. The initiative emphasizes risk stratification and evidence-based risk modification of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries.

The Richard L. Doyle Award — which includes a $10,000 cash prize — will be presented to Sharp Rees-Stealy at MCG's annual Client Forum in San Antonio, Texas, May 19-22, 2019. At the conference, Appel will discuss how her organization leverages MCG informed care strategies to achieve award-winning outcomes.

About Sharp Rees-Stealy
Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Centers offer multispecialty care from a dedicated team including 2,800 staff members representing virtually every allied health profession, in addition to the more than 550 physicians who are members of the affiliated Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group. Sharp Rees-Stealy is dedicated to delivering the extraordinary level of caring called The Sharp Experience, which combines clinical excellence, advanced technology and patient- and family-centered care. Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Centers has 22 locations and accepts most health insurance plans.

Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Centers is part of Sharp HealthCare, San Diego's most comprehensive healthcare delivery system. To learn more about Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Centers, visit http://www.sharp.com/srs or call 1-800-82-SHARP (1-800-827-4277) to choose a doctor who's right for you.

About MCG
MCG, part of the Hearst Health network, helps healthcare organizations implement informed care strategies that proactively and efficiently move people toward health. MCG's transparent assessment of the latest research and scholarly articles, along with our own data analysis, gives patients, providers and payers the vetted information they need to feel confident in every care decision, in every moment. For more information, visit www.mcg.com or follow our Twitter handle at @MCG_Health.

About Hearst Health
The Hearst Health network includes FDB (First Databank), Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase, MedHOK, Hearst Health Ventures and the Hearst Health Innovation Lab (http://www.hearsthealth.com). Hearst also holds a minority interest in the precision medicine and oncology analytics company M2Gen. The mission of Hearst Health is to help guide the most important care moments by delivering vital information into the hands of everyone who touches a person's health journey. Each year in the U.S., care guidance from Hearst Health reaches 85 percent of discharged patients, 205 million insured individuals, 70 million home health visits and 3.2 billion dispensed prescriptions.

About The Richard L. Doyle Award for Innovation and Leadership in Healthcare
The Doyle Award was developed to recognize organizations that make innovative use of the care guidelines to help deliver effective healthcare.

Dr. Doyle, the care guidelines founding editor, was a hospital chief-of-staff when he began creating clinical guidelines in the 1980s to help improve healthcare efficiency and quality at Mercy Hospital in San Diego. He later joined Milliman & Robertson and in 1990 published the first set of what was to become the care guidelines.

Judges for this award are independent healthcare quality experts, not currently associated with MCG. Applicants were judged on how well their projects supported the MCG mission to help drive effective care. Judges looked for evidence of improvements in healthcare quality and patient safety; patient/member satisfaction; staff efficiency, productivity and satisfaction; internal/external communication; and effective use of resources.

Contact
Arri Burgess
MCG Health
Tel: 206 389 5405
[email protected]

Related Links

MCG Care Guidelines

MCG Chronic Care

SOURCE MCG Health