Integrated Health Care: A Case Study

Health Information Exchange (HIE) has become a major component in today’s healthcare. Health information exchange provides a secure way for providers to appropriately access and electronically share a patient’s medical information. Therefore, reducing duplicate testing, minimizing medication errors and providing a link among electronic health records (EHR) in order to provide quality healthcare.

Vertically integrated health care system that I have chosen is the Veterans Administration (VA) it's accountable for a large patient population for military veterans. As stated, The Veterans Health Administration is America’s largest integrated health care system with over 1,700 sites of care, serving 8.76 million Veterans each year (VA.GOV). The services that's provided to veterans is health care, rehabilitation, employment, education, home loan guaranties, and life insurance coverage. VA control costs by buying in bulk and control costs by engaging in a deep, single-source relationship with each patient. The Assistant Secretary for Management oversees all resource requirements, development and implementation of agency performance measures,

There are several different reasons as to why a long term care facility would seek to join either an integrated health system (IHS) or an integrated health network (IHN). The motivation to participate typically comes from either a requirement or eagerness to enhance the organization's situation within the long term care environment. Organization chose to incorporate an integrated system or network when the goals of the whole outweigh the goals of the individual organization's current state.

The U.S healthcare system has been characterized as complex, fragmented and costly, and one that thus results in an inefficient allocation of resources. Due to this, the concept of integrated healthcare delivery systems (IDSs) has gained much interest over the past few decades. Throughout healthcare policy, these systems have been considered the better solution to addressing issues surrounding not only the cost of care to the system, but the quality of care that is provided from the system. Much in alignment with the concepts of managed care, integrated delivery systems act to contain the cost of healthcare, while providing quality care to the consumer.

Hi Dr. Lori, on newly diagnosed pt's with Cystic fibrosis (CF) one would gear them to NIH (National Institute of Health), Mayo clinic, located in Arizona or Minnesota, were they can be part of treatment groups or pilots for medications. There are so many advances in the treatment of CF that there is an abundance of resources out there. Resources can be reached from the care managers or through joining a family group of individuals with CF. My friend, Ms. C, stated that her two sons who are now 19 and 22 years old. They have no hospitalizations in over 5 years. Statistics are numbers on pages of people we don't know, doing research for a disease. These young men would look forward to their weekly infusions of high doses of vitamins and glutathione when they were young because it made them feel better.

Over the years more healthcare organizations, like DaVita, Inc. and MedStar Health have increasingly expanded to become integrated healthcare systems through mergers, acquisitions, or joint ventures with efficiency and good performance by achieving a strategy of focusing on being more accessible with population health and providing high quality care at an affordable reduced, cost with a goal of keeping patients healthy with good medical outcomes.

Heritage Oaks Hospital provides a less restrictive step-down treatment environment at three outpatient centers: Harbor Oaks in West Sacramento serves adults and senior adults; Roseville Oaks serves adolescents, adults, and senior adults; and Winding Oaks next to the main hospital serves adults and senior adults. According to course textbook, the goal of outpatient programs is to improve quality of life and to return clients to daily activities among family, peers, and the community (Varcarolis, 2013). The treatments available include psychiatric, emotional, behavioral, and substance abuse. These outpatient centers have partial hospitalization program (PHP) and intensive outpatient program (IOP). According to the hospital website, outpatient services include physician oversight, medication management, group therapies, educational practices such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) (heritageoakshospital.com, 2017). I was assigned to Roseville Oaks Outpatient Behavioral Health Center. It was helpful for me to

Looking at health care around the world demonstrates that no matter what type of health care is being employed – socialist, capitalist or a blending of the two – there are system wide changes that may be implemented. Within their study, Koch, Miksch; Schürmann; Joos & Sawicki (2011) reported in table 2, that 71% of Canadian physicians feel that fundamental changes have to be made to the health care system for it work better (Koch, Miksch, Schürmann, Joos, & Sawicki, 2011). Mery, et al. (2015) suggest that integrated care would reduce fragmentation and duplication of services while improving patients’ experiences (Mery, et al., 2015, p. 136). “Provider cohesion” is mentioned as being fundamental in the care of elderly

I guess the article in the link was more focused on the need to enable patient care coordination across different conditions or settings when it delved into clinical integration programs. Integrating clinical care is not as easy as it seems because it covers a variety of issues that are needed to be changed or improved upon to be considered a success like changes in provider culture, payment methods and incentives, and even federal laws (AHA.org, 2015). And I agree with the notion that combining data to produce a complete picture of what treatment and recovery looks like is essential to deliver research value for a patient and his care.

Practice evaluations are the systematic ways of evaluating the effectives of social program. It involves using applied social research to find the extent to which social programs are carried out effectively and efficiently. Practice of work can be evaluated by the application of quantitative or qualitative research methods in order to answer questions about the social work practice. Social workers engage in research for two primary reasons. The first reason is to evaluate their own practice: interventions and programs. Social workers have a responsibility to provide high quality of care to their clients. The second reason social workers engage in research is to add to the body of knowledge in the field. Knowledge gained from the research

Integrated care can focus on a variety of different aspects in the medical profession. This study examines how to better approach patients needs and reduce fragmenation services. By implementing a collaborative care model for all ages , there is a opportunity for intergrated delivery system in a primary care setting. The study includes a new case where the model can incorporate a collabortation with some medical insruances to reduce expenditures while preserving or enhancing the quality of care. In efforts to see how to improve care through different platfoms, such as telephonically.This can help support treatments and expedite referrals. The goal would be to administer a universal screening, identify an connect with team, montitor and improve

PCP and BH services use the same EMR. All healthcare workers proving care can see the member’s treatment coordination.

This program goes above and beyond to bring the hapinnes of their patients. They refer their clients to outside services to help them in their daily lives. For example, if a person in their program is having a hard time cooking and cleaning in their home, this programs offers them outside resources of people who can help them. They also refer people to therapy if the patient needs it, schooling, housing, immigration status, and overall everything the patients needs the program will help.

The article aimed to examine experience of patients and their family member with care taker integration as a part of primary care CM interventions. The sample in this case was the patients suffering from chronic diseases. The research methodology used for study was based on the qualitative approach and interviews were conducted for data collection. Sample in the study included 25 patients and 8 families. The article is based on the problem that is faced by most of the patients. The main issue is the concentration of huge amount of cost to small populations and this is the segment of people who visit the hospitals frequently. The study examines the risk of faced by the frequent patients in integration of care management and are exposed to the

My recommendation to help with health care delivery system is to actually look to our past, when there were fewer specialist and the primary physician guided the majority of health care. Today this can also be accomplice with the utilization of Family Nurse Practitioners who are more than capable. The current trend toward the over utilization of specialist is not only more expensive it in leads to overlooked problems or co morbidities. This trend has happened for a variety of reason including fear of malpractice suites, and a demanding public think this would lead them to better care. Unfortunately this is not always the care and the patients are not treated as a whole. That is why I strongly recommend incentivizing our best and brightest