Health Care Innovation Awards: West Virginia

Notes and Disclaimers:

• Projects shown may have also operated in other states (see the Geographic Reach)
• Descriptions and project data (e.g. gross savings estimates, population served, etc.) are 3 year estimates provided by each organization and are based on budget submissions required by the Health Care Innovation Awards application process.
• While all projects were expected to produce cost savings beyond the 3 year grant award, some may not achieve net cost savings until after the initial 3-year period due to start-up-costs, change in care patterns and intervention effect on health status.

CARILION NEW RIVER VALLEY MEDICAL CENTER    

Project Title: “Improving health for at-risk rural patients (IHARP) in 23 southwest Virginia counties through a collaborative pharmacist practice model”
Geographic Reach: Virginia, West Virginia
Funding Amount: $4,162,618
Estimated 3-Year Savings: $4,308,295

Summary: Carilion New River Valley Medical Center, in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy, Aetna Healthcare and select community pharmacies, received an award to improve medication therapy management for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and other patients in 23 underserved, rural counties in southwest Virginia. Their care delivery model, involving six rural and one urban hospitals and 20 primary care practices, trains pharmacists in transformative care and chronic disease management protocols. Through care coordination and shared access to electronic medical records, the project enables pharmacists to participate in improving medication adherence and management, resulting in better health, reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits, and fewer adverse drug events for patients with multiple chronic diseases.

DUKE UNIVERSITY

Project Title: “From clinic to community: achieving health equity in the southern United States”
Geographic Reach: Mississippi, North Carolina, West Virginia
Funding Amount: $9,773,499
Estimated 3-Year Savings: $20,800,000

Summary: Led by Duke University, the Southeastern Diabetes Initiative (SEDI) is a project that supports integrated teams implementing a model for improving health outcomes and quality of life for those suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in the Southeastern United States. The majority of funds are being used to (1) harvest data from all electronic sources in each county to create a comprehensive, integrated data warehouse to accurately reflect clinical and social data that can be represented at the individual, neighborhood, and community level, and (2) use that data to implement spatially-enabled informatics systems that risk stratify patients and neighborhoods, allowing implementation of an intense clinical intervention from a multi-disciplinary team that provides care to the highest risk patients as well as additional individual and neighborhood interventions to moderate risk patients and neighborhoods - providing real-time monitoring of individuals and populations with T2DM and serving as the basis for decision support and evaluation of interventions. A spatially-enabled analytical platform has been created via an electronic health record integrated data warehouse that covers the vast majority of Durham and Cabarrus County, North Carolina residents (representing urban and rural African Americans and Hispanics in North Carolina), Mingo County, West Virginia, and Quitman County, Mississippi (rural African Americans in the Mississippi Delta). Our collaborative team includes the Mississippi Institute for Public Health; Center for Rural Health at Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, Marshall University; the Mingo County, West Virginia Diabetes Coalition and Williamson Health and Wellness Federally Qualified Health Center in Williamson, West Virginia; the Appalachian Regional Commission; the Durham County Department of Health in Durham, North Carolina; Duke University Medical Center; the Cabarrus Health Alliance in Kannapolis, North Carolina and Cabarrus Community Health Centers in Concord, North Carolina; and the National Center for Geospatial Medicine at the University of Michigan.

PITTSBURGH REGIONAL HEALTH INITIATIVE

Project Title: Creating a Virtual Accountable Care Network for Complex Medicare Patients
Geographic Reach: Pennsylvania, West Virginia
Funding Amount: $10,419,511
Estimated 3-Year Savings: $74,100,000

Summary: Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative received an award for a plan to create specialized support centers, staffed by nurse care managers and pharmacists, to help small primary care practices offer more integrated care within the service areas of seven regional hospitals in Western Pennsylvania. The project will focus not only on approximately 19,000 Medicare beneficiaries with COPD, CHF, and CAD, but also the general primary care population of this area. The resulting teams will provide support for care transitions, intensive chronic disease management, medication adherence, and other problems associated with a lack of communication in health care systems at large and the resulting fragmentation of health care for patients. This approach is expected to reduce 30-day readmissions and avoidable disease-specific admissions with estimated savings of approximately $41 million. Over the three-year period, Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative’s program will train an estimated 450 health care workers and create an estimated 26 new jobs. These workers will combine core competencies in the management of specific diseases with primary care support skills, and will be trained in evidence-based pathways of care.

TransforMED

Project Title: “Multi-community partnership between TransforMED, hospitals in the VHA system and a technology/data analytics company to support transformation to PCMH of practices connected with the hospitals and development of “Medical Neighborhood”
Geographic Reach: Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, West Virginia
Funding Amount: $20,750,000
Estimated 3-Year Savings: $52,824,000

Summary: TransforMED received an award for a primary care redesign project across 15 communities to support care coordination among Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMH), specialty practices, and hospitals, creating “medical neighborhoods.” The project will use a sophisticated analytics engine, provided by a vendor, Phytel, to identify high risk patients and coordinate care across the medical neighborhood while driving PCMH transformation in a number of primary care practices in each community. Truly comprehensive care will improve care transitions and reduce unnecessary testing, leading to lower costs with better outcomes. TransforMED will work with VHA to capture learnings from leading performers. Cost trends will be identified via claims data using an analytic tool provided by a vendor, Cobalt Talon. Over a three-year period, TransforMED’s program will train an estimated 3,024 workers and create an estimated 22 jobs.

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