St. Elizabeth Medical Center Reports Significant Reduction in Hospital Readmissions with Use of Patient Outreach Solution from CipherHealth

NEW YORK and UTICA, N.Y., Sept. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- With the specific goal of reducing hospital readmissions and ensuring patient safety, St. Elizabeth Medical Center (SEMC) and health-tech provider CipherHealth announced today the successful results of a pilot program centered around post-visit follow-up calls. SEMC is part of the New York State DSRIP program, a reimbursement program from the federal government aimed at care coordination and reducing unnecessary readmissions, and partnered with CipherHealth to help reach its DSRIP goals around reducing 30-day readmissions. Using CipherHealth's advanced outreach solution VOICE, SEMC experienced a reduction in   readmission for all four patient populations involved in the pilot: acute myocardial infarction (AMI), congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and pneumonia (PNEUMO). The organization used the post-discharge follow-up solution to reach out to these specific patient population groups after they were discharged from the hospital.

SEMC piloted VOICE from February through June 2015. With VOICE, follow-up calls are made between three and four times over a 30-day period, post-discharge from SEMC. The results were significant:

• Readmission rates among patients who engaged with VOICE just once over the 30-day period following discharge reduced by 56 percent.
• Readmission rates among patients who engaged with all post-discharge calls over the 30-day period reduced by 75 percent.
• The patient population with the highest percentage of engagement with calls and requiring calls back were CHF patients. In fact, more than one third of the concerns requiring staff intervention were from CHF patients.

SEMC worked to make sure patients were aware that they would receive a VOICE call after leaving the hospital and educated patients on what the process would look like. As a result, SEMC saw good levels of patient engagement with VOICE calls. Among patients enrolled into the pilot, 80 percent were reached and SEMC found that 45 percent of patients reached required a call back from staff to provide additional support. 

The medical center has also leveraged the data provided by VOICE calls to manage patients during the discharge process and, as a result, the rate of post-discharge intervention calls has reduced since the start of the pilot. For instance, SEMC learned that symptom management was a primary issue among the patient populations involved in the pilot program. Armed with this knowledge, SEMC was able to focus on educating patients about symptom management during the inpatient stay.

"The implementation of an advanced outreach solution has allowed us to ensure that our patients are staying on track and we can intervene in a timely manner when they need additional support," said Kim Witchley, director of Social Services and Care Transitions for Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS), which includes SEMC. "VOICE has helped to reduce readmission rates and we are looking to do a second pilot program with the other hospital in our system."

"SEMC was very focused on getting readmission rates down," said Andrea Nortey, account strategist for CipherHealth. "We couldn't be more proud of the impact VOICE has had for the hospital and its patients."

About SEMC
SEMC is a Catholic, not-for-profit healthcare organization that affiliated with Faxton St. Luke's Healthcare (FSLH) as the Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS) in March 2014. Both SEMC and FSLH serve the geographic area of Oneida, Herkimer and Madison counties. SEMC includes one inpatient campus - 2209 Genesee Street, Utica, NY (main) and St. Elizabeth Medical Arts (outpatient) - 4401 Middle Settlement Road, New Hartford, as well as a network of primary and rehabilitation care sites in Oneida and Herkimer counties that includes the MVHS Medical Group. Learn more at www.stemc.org

About CipherHealth
Since 2009, CipherHealth has been innovating and delivering products to help care providers effectively and efficiently provide quality of care for their patients.  By harnessing technology to improve patient outcomes and experiences, CipherHealth and its suite of products focus on the evolution of patient care.  CipherHealth is based in New York City and was named "Best Place to Work in Healthcare" by Modern Healthcare (2014).

About Voice
Voice is a secure, web-based platform that makes comprehensive, interactive post-discharge follow-up calls to patients.  A highly customizable solution, Voice also provides and provides feedback on patient issues in real time for faster nurse intervention and multi-level executive reporting.  The goals of Voice are to reduce preventable 30-day readmissions and increase top box HCAHPS scores while maintaining a high level of patient satisfaction.

SOURCE CipherHealth

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