Population Health
Leading the Nation in Accountable Care
For the second year in a row, Becker’s Healthcare named Hackensack Meridian Health’s accountable care organizations (ACO) to its 2017 list of 110 ACOs to Know. The Network’s Medicare ACOs and clinically integrated network all marked major achievements this past year.
Hackensack Meridian Health Partners, the Network’s clinically integrated network, continues to grow daily. To date, nearly 3,500 physicians throughout the network are part of this robust group. In January, Hackensack Meridian Health Partners began welcoming physicians from JFK Medical Group. More than 200 JFK Medical Center affiliated physicians have already joined, increasing the expertise and number of patients served by this highly coordinated network of health care providers.
Care Redesign
The Network’s care management teams are more aligned than ever before. Our medical centers’ care coordination, social work, utilization review and CDI teams are now officially part of the Population Health team.
All teams now use the triad model, enabling inpatient and outpatient care management teams to operate in the same manner with standardized roles and responsibilities for the first time. Projected to take 18 months, this major initiative was finalized in less than 10 thanks to the dedication of team members.
Increasing Payor Collaboration
Hackensack Meridian Health Partners expanded its payor partnerships and strengthened its existing relationships this past year.
Keeping Our Community Healthy
The Population Health launched several new initiatives aimed at keeping the community healthy. Along with Community Outreach, the team supported farmers markets throughout our market this summer, teaching people about the importance of healthy eating and educating them about all the preventative health services Hackensack Meridian Health has to offer.
At Hackensack University Medical Center, the team started an emergency department (ED) program, aimed at decreasing ED usage among Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield insured patients. As part of the program, transition assistants meet with Horizon patients while they’re in the ED and assist them in setting up follow-up appointments. Since it began, the transition assistants have seen more than a thousand patients and scheduled nearly a thousand appointments with our network’s primary care physicians and specialists.
In an effort to lower patient costs and increase proper medication usage, Population Health created a campaign aimed at increasing the use of generic medications among Hackensack Meridian Health Partners physicians. In collaboration with our physicians, the program successfully switched almost half of the prescriptions from brand-name to generic medications, resulting in nearly $500,000 in estimated annual savings.
