Critical Care Pulmonary and Sleep Associates sees bottom-line results in COPD lung health initiative

Critical Care Associates photo.jpg

Front, left to right: Kristina Gauthier, MA; Samantha Weimer, clinic director; Brandy Zamora, HIS; Jim Cheevers, DME coordinator

Back, left to right: Kim Ayling, receptionist; Alisa Batton, RT; Deleah Johnson, MA; Chris Thomas, ANM; Jen Cook, MA; Maria Huyck, Lead MA; Karissa de la Garza, receptionist.

With 16 providers across numerous locations, Critical Care Pulmonary and Sleep Associates (CCPSA) was already providing excellent care for patients. But working with HealthTeamWorks under the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPi) has provided focus and enabled the practice to demonstrate, in hard numbers, its quality improvement outcomes.

The Denver, Colorado-area practice includes clinics in Lakewood, Parker and Westminster, as well as outreach locations in Burlington-Frisco and three telemedicine clinics. CCPSA also provides inpatient support at intensive care units in five area hospitals.

Clinic director Samantha Weimer says HealthTeamWorks’ practice coaching has helped move ongoing quality improvement into the workstream by focusing on changes that really impact the bottom line. One initiative focused on quality measurement and improvement efforts for at-home monitoring and follow-up of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

“When you’re going through the PDSA cycle on your own, it takes a lot of work and effort. But with someone helping you stay on track and keeping your eye on the prize, it makes you more efficient and helps you get the outcomes you want,” she says. “We were really able to say, let’s get down to what we want to tackle. It streamlined the work by offering focus, so we could chase after what’s most important and get the most impact out of the resources you have.”

Identifying which data to use to monitor quality and sharing that between the practices has helped moved the needle on quality improvement. With health information technology assistance from HealthTeamWorks, CCPSA was able to push its electronics health records vendor to create a clinical dashboard so the practice could monitor quality in real time.

The data showed that CCPSA’s lung health initiative at one hospital was successfully reducing hospital readmissions for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Armed with relevant clinical quality data in a presentation format, Samantha was able to make the case for expanding the initiative to more practice locations.

“We started in-home pulmonary function and sleep testing and wanted to know if that really lowered costs. We discovered that we were able to bring in more patients with the same amount of staffing. HealthTeamWorks helped us evaluate that and really monitor what was making the difference. The biggest hospital came to our doctors and said that we are just knocking it out of the park, and they’re really pleased with how that’s going,” she says. The project was among those presented at a recent statewide TCPi summit.

Participating in networking and learning sessions with other TCPi practices has also been beneficial.

“HealthTeamWorks has been great at helping me make that connection to others who are also doing this,” Samantha says. “HealthTeamWorks is the bridge to practice transformation for me. Jaclyn and Jennifer have been fantastic, helping us with anything we needed. I’ve just appreciated them and their expertise.”