Gila River Health Care Targets Diabetes Case Management With InterSystems DeepSee
Physicians See Breakthroughs in Care Delivery, Patient Satisfaction With Embedded Real-time Business Intelligence Software
InterSystems Corporation, the global leader in software for connected health care, recently announced that Gila River Health Care (GRHC) has gone live with a breakthrough application aimed at improving diabetes case management. The new health care application leverages InterSystems DeepSee real-time business intelligence software to make critical data easily available to everyone involved in the diabetes treatment process.
Sacaton, Ariz.-based GRHC is a not-for-profit organization focused on serving American Indian communities. It includes a critical-access hospital and a clinic and health care center that provide a wide range of primary care services to its patient population.
InterSystems specializes in advanced integration, database, and business intelligence technologies for breakthrough applications. InterSystems DeepSee software is embedded within transactional applications to provide real-time business intelligence without requiring a data warehouse.
Meeting the Challenges of Chronic Care Delivery
GRHC implemented DeepSee as part of a concentrated effort to more effectively manage diabetes treatment by primary care physicians, according to Dr. Leonard Sanders, Director of the Diabetes Care Program and Diabetes Education at GRHC. "From my perspective, diabetes may be the most complex disorder in all of medicine to manage for both the health care provider and the patient," he said. "We are trying to get needed information to our primary care providers as rapidly as possible. With timely data access, we can change our practice habits to support optimal care delivery."
Any chronic disease requires a dedicated team approach that supports the Chronic Care Model (CCM), Sanders maintained. "The CCM identifies the essential elements of a health care system that encourage high-quality chronic disease care."
"We examined several business intelligence solutions," noted GRHC Director of IT Bill Conati. "DeepSee's advanced features combined with the ability to seamlessly access patient data that reside in the Indian Health Service's electronic health record (EHR) system, which is built on the InterSystems CACHÉ database, drove the selection of DeepSee for the diabetes care project."
With help from an InterSystems implementation team, GRHC specified the requirements for a pilot program involving 200 patients with diabetes. "Using DeepSee, we're able to do extensive data mining on a patient's EHR and to extract the information needed to optimize treatment," Conati said. "The team created a detailed data model and developed a comprehensive dashboard library proving sophisticated analytical information on a host of relevant patient information, including blood pressure, cholesterol, and tobacco screenings."
Optimizes Care Delivery, Productivity, Patient Satisfaction
Sanders pointed to an intuitive interface and speed of data delivery as key features contributing to the success of the pilot project. "Preventing diabetes complications requires protecting the small and large arteries by controlling the ABCS—A1C, blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and smoking. Nationally, less than 15% of diabetic patients have all four controlled. Getting timely data to the treatment team may eventually enable us to achieve a 60-70 percent control rather than the current low level of control," Sanders said.
Patients and health care providers at GRHC are already receiving multiple immediate benefits from the DeepSee-based solution. "Patient care breaks down into three basic elements. These are quality of care delivery, patient satisfaction and productivity," Sanders said. "When providers can get patients treated rapidly, implement a treatment plan that can prevent serious diabetes complications, and share the results with their patients, there is a significant gain in overall patient satisfaction."
"GRHC is using DeepSee to address patient issues tied to a disease that has become a nationally visible health problem," said Paul Grabscheid, InterSystems Vice President of Strategic Planning. "We were excited to work with them on their breakthrough pilot system and look forward to helping GRHC achieve more successes in this challenging area of health care."
About InterSystems
InterSystems Corporation is a global software leader with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and offices in 23 countries. InterSystems provides advanced software technologies for breakthrough applications. InterSystems DeepSee is software that makes it possible to embed real-time business intelligence capabilities in transactional applications. InterSystems CACHÉ is a high performance object database that makes applications faster and more scalable. InterSystems Ensemble is a seamless platform for integration and the development of connectable applications. InterSystems HealthShare is a strategic platform for healthcare informatics, providing capabilities such as sharing of clinical information (including regional and national EHR solutions), comprehensive advanced analytics, building clinician and patient Web-based communities, and quickly filling informational and functional cross-system "gaps." For more information, visit InterSystems.com.
About GRHC
Located thirty-five miles south of Phoenix, Arizona, in the Community of Sacaton, Gila River Health Care is a not-for-profit corporation chartered under the auspices of the Gila River Indian Community Tribal government to serve American Indian communities. Today, the organization is comprised of Hu Hu Kam Memorial Hospital, a 15-bed critical access hospital located in Sacaton, Ariz. This facility provides a wide range of primary health care services to its populations including a state-of-the-art dialysis unit and comprehensive behavioral health services. The Komatke Health Center, located in Komatke, Ariz., opened in January of 2009 to replace the Gila Crossing Clinic and to expand its services to the area. It provides a number of comprehensive primary health services, a state-of-the-art dialysis unit and extensive behavioral health services. The Ak-Chin Clinic is located within the Ak-chin Indian Community to provide this population with primary health care services. For more information, visit GRHC.org.
SOURCE: InterSystems Corporation