In the world of data, it’s easy to forget that the stats and numbers represent real lives, but that knowledge is at the core of Castell Health’s mission. In his years working alongside Arcadia, Castell Health CEO David Dirks collaborated with Chief Executive Officer Michael Meucci to turn hard numbers into practical interventions. The result is a network that fuses technology with empathy, reaching its community proactively to stop problems before they start.
Arcadia and Castell Health’s partnership is more than just a transaction. In the quest for better patient outcomes, both parties share a commitment to challenging the status quo. Sometimes that means challenging each other, too.
The path to optimal efficiency and empowered communities isn’t linear — it’s the product of continuous refinement and shared values.
“Sometimes we have disagreements about what that looks like, or what it means, or what the best way to accomplish something is,” Dirks says. “In that friction and disagreement, working through that, most of the time I would say we come out with an even better answer.”
Collaboration and clear goals build trust, which Dirks and Castell Health wouldn’t have if Arcadia was “just a data vendor.” Instead, we’re translating numbers into meaningful solutions.
In this “thought partnership,” as Dirks puts it, troubleshooting is a top priority. It stems from a simple concept: what if Castell Health could foresee potential disasters and keep them from happening at all? A hefty database of patient records meant the system was prepared to spot trends and respond swiftly.
Enter COVID-19. Castell and Arcadia banded together, and the result was a unique algorithm designed to detect the highest risk patients — those that had contracted the virus and might get sickest, and those that hadn’t, but were likely to become infected.
With Arcadia’s text message outreach system, Castell’s patients received personalized attention from their provider. Physically isolated or not, it demonstrated that no matter the diagnosis, they weren’t alone.
What might look like a meaningless mass of numbers can contain urgent insights. Like the aggregate data of EHRs and insurance claims, it’s important to remember that people power Arcadia’s technology and healthcare networks’ successful interventions.
Data illustrates problems; humans solve them. Moving between the macro (vast stores of files) and the micro (a phone call from a doctor to a patient) lets Castell Health ensure quality at every scale, and in every case, the goal is one more healthy person, thriving in their community.
In 2016, Castell Health’s goal was preventing health crises. In 2020, it became responding to a global crisis on a local scale. Data can give healthcare networks the necessary insight to trim inefficiencies and build sustainable, cost-effective models of care.
The world will continue to throw curveballs, but a partnership like the one between Arcadia and Castell Health means the people pulling the levers can act quickly, with their own communities in mind.