Successful collaboration honored for Improving Patient Outcomes and Clinical Condition Management Through Incentivizing Primary Care Practice Staff

Stellar Health has been named a recipient of the KLAS Payor/Provider Points of Light Award in collaboration with five major health systems, Baptist Health, St. Bernards Healthcare, Medical Associates of Northwest Arkansas, Washington Regional Medical Center, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield for its work in Improving Patient Outcomes and Clinical Condition Management by Incentivizing Non-Provider Staff.

The Points of Light Award celebrates success stories—or Points of Light—from payers, providers and healthcare technology companies that work collaboratively to align care delivery with health plan sponsor initiatives to reduce inefficiencies and improve the patient experience.

 “Our partnership with the five health systems and Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield exemplifies the gold standard of what Stellar aims to achieve when engaging our Payor and Provider partners,” said Alicia Voorhees, Director of Network & Strategy. “Each organization committed to changing healthcare delivery by implementing a program focused on two main goals: improving patient outcomes and recognizing the work being done by clinic staff in a meaningful way.”

Stellar Health has the philosophy of rewarding providers and non-clinical staff for the work that lives outside of the existing fee schedule that drive value-based outcomes and this acknowledgment from KLAS is testament to that impact the Stellar model is having for real patients. It is an achievement that has been earned by the relentless collaboration and tireless work of the doctors, care managers, administrators, other non-clinical staff and others; converting challenges to opportunities and realizing these opportunities to make sustainable impacts steadily led exponential outcomes for successful use case developments.

The catalyst for launching the Stellar program was a desire to do something differently to create better health outcomes for Arkansans.  Specifically, Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield noticed that Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Medicaid members who became eligible for Medicaid due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion were not having health outcomes at the same levels as other member populations. They wanted to ensure that members were getting the level of care they needed and that the time spent providing that care was being accurately coded.

Arkansas Blue Cross believed that enhancing their current value-based program offering would help Primary Care Providers identify and recapture persistent chronic conditions at the point of care, thereby improving patient outcomes and health equity and also enabling the organizations to better understand their patient population’s illness burden to reflect an accurate view on current health status. Through the Partnership for a Healthy Arkansas, Blue Cross approached each health system to pilot a project aimed at addressing care gaps at the point of care by incentivizing (for the time it takes to assess value-based actions) frontline staff and physicians on a monthly basis to help clinics achieve specific quality outcomes. With top level buy-in with all five CEOs, the health systems agreed to roll out this initiative to 40 clinics, representing a total of approximately 200 Primary Care Providers and 10,000 members. They leveraged Stellar Value Units (SVUs), which are converted into dollars and can be earned by non-clinical staff, clinical navigators, schedulers, nurses, and so forth for assessing care gaps and assisting with the administration and documentation of patient care.

Key outcomes from the collaboration: 

  • Arkansas Blue Cross return of 3x
  • Improved quality performance measures compared to 2021
  • Higher coding accuracy rates compared to clinics not involved in the pilot
  • Increased revenue for both health systems and the individuals working in the clinic, driving increased staff morale during a very challenging time in healthcare
  • Increased teamwork driving more successful value-based care
  • Improved frontline staff engagement

As a result of the pilot’s success in the first year, Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield elected to expand the relationship with Stellar across all clinics within the initial 5 health systems, and subsequently across the state. 

Looking to the future, the recognition of Stellar Health with the 2023 KLAS Points of Light Award highlights the transformative potential of collaboration and incentivizing non-provider staff in healthcare. As technology continues to advance and the industry shifts deeper into value-based care, initiatives that enable the entire practice care team have the potential to drive even greater improvements in patient outcomes. By leveraging data and analytics to identify care gaps and incentivizing frontline staff to assess them, we can continue to improve the quality of care and drive better outcomes for patients. Stellar Health’s innovative approach and dedication to improving healthcare delivery provides a glimpse into the possibilities that lie ahead for payor and provider partnerships, and the future of healthcare looks brighter as a result.

 

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