6/11/2019
Christy Calhoun, MPH, Chief Content Officer
In this three-part series, Christy Calhoun, Healthwise’s senior vice president of consumer health experience, shares ways care managers can use health education to involve members in their care, work more productively, and lower costs of care. Be sure to read the first installment of Christy’s series as well: “Curating and Organizing Content.”
For your care management strategy to be successful, it’s best if it’s customized to your organization’s needs and those of your members. Once you’ve organized your content in a way that makes sense for your team, pulling usage data will be easier. Leveraging this data helps your care managers and coaches work smarter, not harder, saving your organization time and money while still improving member outcomes.
Healthwise’s care management application integrates with your population health management platform to show how your members use the educational material you send them. Armed with this information, care managers know when to schedule follow-up activities. This data can also show which types of communication each member prefers to receive. For instance, if a member always watches the videos but is less likely to view the Care Support pages, care managers learn that the member is probably a visual learner who is more likely to engage with videos.
Knowing which content a member has or has not viewed allows care managers to “fill in the gaps” during coaching sessions. They can reinforce key educational concepts that the member still needs more interaction with, and spend less time on topics the member has already been educated about.
For example, this member viewed two videos on diabetes but hasn’t yet looked at the piece on using a home blood sugar diary. So additional coaching on the home blood sugar diary could be a goal of the next coaching session. Seeing which items the member has interacted with before the next coaching encounter allows the care manager to tailor the conversation to the member’s needs. In this case, the care manager knows they’ll need to discuss home blood sugar diaries in detail, but they may not need to spend much time on the basics of high blood sugar or how to test for it.
One of the biggest obstacles to care manager efficiency is the inability to measure progress and success. Until you know what works and what doesn’t—and have the statistics to prove it—your “strategy” is nothing more than shots in the dark and anecdotal evidence.
Integrating Healthwise into your PHM enables you to see how your care managers and members are trending along metrics such as
This aggregate data provides training opportunities across your team (which I’ll discuss in-depth in Part 3) and highlights high-value tasks.
Automation is perhaps the biggest time-saver you can implement. It allows your organization to send educational materials to your members automatically. Leveraging your user data to set up automated “triggers” allows for smaller teams, costs less, and frees your coaches to focus on members who need one-on-one attention. The first step is to identify your target audience. There are several ways to segment your population.
These are just a few examples of ways you can leverage data to improve efficiency across your care management team. Study your own coaching strategies to determine what will work best in your organization. As part of this process, you may discover the need to offer additional training to your team, either across the board or on a case-by-case basis. The final installment of my care management efficiency series takes an in-depth look at how to identify training opportunities within your coaching team.
Want to know more about how health education can enhance your care management program and help keep your care managers efficient and productive? Check out the Healthwise Solution for Care Management.