Unmatched Physician Engagement

LifeMasters has long recognized that developing a strong relationship with physicians is critical to the success of a disease management program. Since its beginnings LifeMasters has involved physicians in its disease management process based on the knowledge and experience of its physician founder. With the goals of enhancing access to care and facilitating more frequent and improved communications between doctors and patients, LifeMasters has incorporated and continuously refined its physician engagement initiatives to ensure that the physician-patient relationship is respected, enhanced and upheld. Recognizing that most medical care is delivered through small practices which do not have the resources to develop disease management capabilities, LifeMasters has focused its efforts on developing tools that can be implemented at the small and solo practice level.

Customized Parameters
LifeMasters works directly with physicians to incorporate customized care instructions for each of their enrolled patients to ensure that LifeMasters educational coaching is aligned with the doctor’s treatment plan. For instance, if a physician specifies that an ACE inhibitor is not indicated for a particular patient, this is noted in the participant’s computerized participant record, cannot be overridden and is strictly adhered to. The nurse then has this information at his/her fingertips and incorporates it into the coaching process. This feature avoids the frustration physicians feel when a third party tells their patient they need something that the physician has specifically decided against, ensures that integrity of the physician-patient relationship is maintained, the safety of the patient is supported and the physician remains in control.

Health Alerts
Most disease management programs engage the physician at the beginning of the process but few actively engage physicians on an ongoing basis. One of the biggest challenges for physicians managing patients with chronic conditions is knowing how their patients are doing in between office visits. LifeMasters has developed an efficient system to collect biometric and symptom data from a large percentage of the population, triage that information, and alert physicians in real time when an actionable out–of-bounds event has occurred.

Health Alerts, either faxed or e-mailed, immediately notify the physician of clinically- validated events that are caused by a clinical exacerbation, and are out-of-bounds of accepted evidence-based guidelines.

The alerts provide physicians with information in a familiar form that fits with their office flow and is directly actionable. This access to real-time reporting enables physicians to intervene in a timely fashion. If it is determined that a clinical exacerbation is caused by a patient’s failure to comply with his/her treatment plan, LifeMasters nurses turn these into “teaching moments” by providing the necessary coaching and support to prevent such an episode in the future.

Outcomes
The faxed Health Alert requests direct feedback from the physician office to LifeMasters on how the exacerbation was handled and the resulting outcome. Additionally, each program participant for whom a Health Alert is sent is called within 24 hours. Based on feedback from these two sources, over two-thirds of physicians (nearly 50,000 in the past ten years) who receive a Health Alert take action on the information within 7 days without any further contact from LifeMasters.

To further measure outcomes, physician satisfaction surveys are sent annually to all participating physicians. Physician ratings of satisfaction and usefulness are high.