Wield the power of one piece of data
By Brian Eastwood
In an interview with FierceHealthPayer, Lynn Barr, chief transformation officer with the National Rural Accountable Care Organization (NRACO), tells the story of a 72-year-old patient with a history of falls, broken bones and back pains. The patient went online and found an outpatient surgery center that gave her an implant as a way to fix the problem.
Before long, the patient was in a local emergency department, complaining of pain. The ED sent her to a major medical center to remove the implant, at a cost of $164,000.
"That's healthcare today," said Barr, pictured right. "It's terribly depressing." However, she added, the story shows how even a single piece of data can "activate" healthcare organizations.
Many urban hospitals have an "advice nurse" who counsels patients over the phone or online about their health problems. This helps the systems avoid the unnecessary hospitalizations or costly complications associated with patient self-referral or self-medication.
Rural hospitals, on the other hand, often can't afford advice nurses or nurse navigators, Barr said. Showing how one nurse could have, in a single patient encounter, saved $164,000--more that the cost of that nurse's annual salary and benefits--changes the game entirely.
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Wield the power of one piece of data
