Arcadia VP of Data Operations Mary Kuchenbrod discussed how to leverage data and analytics to develop population health interventions that improve patient outcomes with Healthcare Brew.
“There’s immense potential that we’re beginning to tap into as an industry to make sure that data is collected, aggregated, and also analyzed and surfaced in a way that makes it really useful for setting the right actions,” said Kuchenbrod.
An example she gave is one in which Umpqua Health developed a program to send air purifiers to patients at risk for smoke-related illnesses to improve health outcomes.
Robin Traver, VP of clinical operations for Umpqua Health, leveraged the Arcadia platform to identify and prioritize patients who would be given an air purifier to mitigate respiratory or cardiac conditions, like asthma and heart disease, which can worsen due to smoke and poor air quality.
“Once we had the list from Arcadia, we went through, one by one, the first probably 50 people on the list and tried to validate and make sure, ‘Are these really the riskiest people?’” Traver said. “We pulled up their charts and saw, ‘Oh, yes, this person has been in and out of the hospital for [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] or emphysema.’ That gave us peace of mind that this is a valid tool; these are the people that we need to reach out to.”
“Oregon is very on the forefront,” Traver said. “This proactive approach could be adopted by other jurisdictions as wildfire smoke and other climate-related emergencies threaten to exacerbate existing public health disparities.”
To read the article, “How Oregon’s response to wildfire smoke could improve health outcomes,” please visit Healthcare Brew.