Case Study: Ellsworth Medical Clinic
Chandreyee Johnson
MHA/507
Saturday, April 3, 2021
Petula Brown
Case Study: Ellsworth Medical Clinic
The focus of the study, provided by HealthIT (2018), was to allow Ellsworth Medical Clinic to evaluate and improve blood pressure in patients at their clinic using a specifically designed EHR. The objective of Ellsworth Medical Clinic was to consistently bring down patient blood pressure to levels consistently less than 140/90. To evaluate the effectiveness of their implementation, workflows were created that identified the current processes to help develop an EHR that would help clinicians meet the above objective. Through evaluation of the workflows, the facility would develop an EHR that would help enable staff to identify patients that were not meeting healthcare goals, thereby allowing the organization to assist those patients improve. The data to obtain this information included patient blood pressure, medication adherence, and some lifestyle activities including smoking. Analysis of this data was done using algorithms created for the EHR that would specifically identify patients whose health records indicated that improvements were needed. Through understanding the data, the agency was able to identify patient needs and create individual plans that aided in improving overall outcome of patients at that facility.
Data Collection & Analysis
Data collection is an important part of the process to understanding patient statuses and it is therefore crucial that healthcare agencies collect and store EHR data in programs that can meaningfully store and analyze the information for later use (Veeranjaneyulu, Bodapati, & Rao, 2020). The data that was collected for this case study included patient blood pressure data, medication adherence, and patient motivation. Through development and use of an EHR that was designed to measure blood pressure, the facility was able to utilize outreach teams that would then reach out to patients and come up with goals and plans to help the patient achieve lower blood pressure levels.
Outcomes
Through creating and utilizing an EHR that assessed patient health statuses and risk, Ellsworth Medical Clinic saw 90% of the facilities patients meet or decrease blood pressure levels to 140/90 in patients who had been diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, ischemic vascular disease, and strokes. The agency also saw an increase from 73% to 97% in blood pressure decreases (140/90) for diabetic patients at their facility.
Outcome Comparisons and Implications for Other Agencies
In 2017, Grossman & Grossman identified that only 54% of diabetic patients who participated in the EUROASPIRE IV survey had blood pressure levels of less than 140/90. By this standard, Ellsworth Medical Clinic, whose patient blood pressure levels were already above standard, demonstrated an above average success rate for reducing diabetic patient’s blood pressure levels. Additionally, patient motivation plays a large role in patient outcome improvement. Sebire et al. (2018) suggested that through recognizing that patient’s self-determination, empowerment of the patient potentially will increase and is therefore critical in improving patient goal outcomes. Ellsworth Medical Clinic identified patient motivation as a factor for aiding in increases to blood pressure levels and, in doing so, the facility and it’s staff demonstrated more positive outcomes.
Conclusion
Agencies wishing to understand the population they serve and thereby increase patient outcomes would do well to design EHR systems that will allow for specific measurement of a target objective. In the example of Ellsworth Medical Clinic, the facility identified specific measures that the agency wanted to improve on and designed an EHR that would identify patients who needed improvement. Other agencies, through evaluation of available EHR programs, would be able to implement similar processes which shows promise of increasing the organization’s own patient outcomes. While implementation may be costly and time-consuming when first being implemented or changed, the long-term impacts of implementation, when done right, can greatly improve organizational efficiency as well as increase patient health improvement and quality of life.
References
Grossman, A., Grossman, E. Blood pressure control in type 2 diabetic patients. Cardiovasc Diabetol,18(3). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12933-016-0485-3
Health IT (2018). Quality improvement in a primary care practice. https://www.healthit.gov/case-study/quality-improvement-primary-care-practice
Johnson, C. (2021, April). Case study: Ellsworth Medical Clinic http://chandreyee.yolasite.com/mha507.php
Sebire, S.J., Toumpakari, Z., Turner, K.M., Cooper, A.R., Page, A.S., Malpass, A., & Andrews, R.C. (2018, January). “I’ve made this my lifestyle Now”: a prospective qualitative study of motivation for lifestyle change among people with newly diagnosed type two diabetes mellitus. BMC Public Health, 8(204). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5114-5
Veeranjaneyulu, N., Bodapati, J. D., & Rao, M. (2020). Improved data extraction from EHR as linked data for data analysis and decision making. Journal of Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology. XII(V). https://www.xajzkjdx.cn/gallery/151-may2020.pdf
