December 8, 2020
By Dr. Samantha Algrim, Family Practice Associates of Western Kansas, Dodge City, Kansas
After attending University of Kansas for undergrad and medical school, I knew I wanted to stay in Kansas to practice medicine. Rural Kansas isn’t a resource-rich environment, but the patients here deserve the best care. I began an independent family practice to provide my community with the full-spectrum care so many lacked.
Soon after starting my practice, I knew the transition to value-based care was inevitable. As a new, forward-looking physician, I wanted to lead that movement, but I didn’t know how. Aledade equipped me with invaluable technology, tools, and guidance to navigate the transition.
Aledade’s app prepares me for patient appointments so I can play the offensive in my patients’ care. The app lists preventive services for which my patients are eligible. This allows me to monitor their health before something goes wrong. It also includes critical information to help me coordinate patient care, such as other doctors my patient is visiting, additional medications they’re taking, and new diagnoses they may have received. Most importantly, Aledade recommended my practice hire a Care Manager. Our Care Manager acts as an accessible point of contact who has reduced emergency department utilization, provided additional assistance to patients with chronic diseases, and improved communication with the large number of Spanish-speaking patients at my practice.
Aledade’s support has led to positive outcomes in my practice and throughout the entire Aledade Kansas ACO. Our ACO has been able to participate in a quality program with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas. We recently received the exciting news that our ACO reduced the total cost of patient care by 5.8 percent. As a result, practices in the Kansas ACO received a shared savings check! We did this all by working to keep our patients healthy. We decreased ED utilization by 8 percent and reduced inpatient admissions from 73.6 to 70.3 inpatient admits per 1,000. We also focused on preventive care services. For example, we increased breast cancer screenings by 17.9 percent and annual well child checkups by 31 percent.
After my staff saw the impact Aledade’s best practices had on our work, they become even more excited to utilize the Aledade app. They check the app every morning and recommend preventive care options at every opportunity!
I know Aledade will be critical to my practice’s future. Demand is the biggest problem we face. Rural Kansas has so few primary care physicians, my practice faces a challenge of more patient requests than we can serve. By offering shared savings, enhanced patient outcomes, and the opportunity to put primary care doctors back in charge of their patients’ care, Aledade incentivizes doctors to practice primary care. Redirecting doctors to primary care will improve the healthcare system and country as a whole. In this way, Aledade not only betters my practice and the care my patients receive, but leads to a brighter future in healthcare in Kansas and beyond!