THE 2023 INNOVATOR AWARDS PROGRAM
and volatile surge in patient volumes unmatched by prior experience along with an equally challenging reduction in nurse staffing due to COVID infection and staff resignations. These factors forced nursing leaders
onto a tightrope of staffing to adequate levels compared to volume, retaining existing workforce, and minimizing the use of expensive traveler nurses. For many healthcare providers, patient volumes in the last two years do not follow any trend experienced prior to 2020, and predictions about where they are headed have fallen short due to numerous factors including the unpredictable emergence of COVID variants and their varied impact on hospital admissions along with chang- ing behavior of non-COVID patients in their interactions with healthcare. The current environment has stressed tra- ditional nurse staffing models that look at prior year trends to develop staffing plans, putting healthcare systems at risk of understaffing to the detriment of care quality as well as overstaffing to great financial cost. The analytics team at Iowa-based
UnityPoint Health developed a real-time analytics solution that uses machine learning to predict the maximum census for each of the next nine nursing shifts on each nursing unit across the health system. This solution allows decision- makers to strategically shift department staffing to meet the expected demands. Nursing units that are expected to increase relative to the previous shift are colored shades of red by magni- tude (“heating up”), and units that are expected to decrease are colored shades of blue (“cooling down”). Units that are expected to maintain their current cen- sus are colored grey. The predictive models are developed
for every unit of every hospital in the health system and are retrained each run based on most recent data trends, resulting in a solution that is continu- ously learning and adapting to emerging data trends. This approach has made the solutions robust enough to be generaliz- able to each hospital floor throughout the system. The approach shows an improve- ment over baseline by 10 to 40 percent depending on the floor being analyzed. In general, the models perform better on Med/Surg floors and are less accurate in departments such as the ED or OB due to the inherent volatility of these floors (though still improved over baseline).
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Most importantly, nursing leaders are now able to confidently make staffing decisions that better support the nursing teams, who in turn, ensure the best care is provided to the patients they serve.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s MyHealth Bundles Program The complex healthcare marketplace is stressful for consumers searching for the level of care they need—and figur- ing out how to pay for it. Even if health insurance is part of their compensa- tion package, more than 80 percent of employees are confused by the terms and conditions of those benefits. At the same time, 80 percent of employers say their employees don’t open or read their benefits information. That’s often because much of the communication from providers and payers lacks the personalized touch that helps patients understand details about their health and know how to navigate their care journey—gaps that lead to poor health outcomes and higher costs. Vanderbilt Health Employer Solutions
(VHES) addresses these critical gaps with the MyHealth Bundles program—an innovative, value-based approach to managing some of the most common and costly health conditions, such as pregnancy, musculoskeletal pain, hearing loss, and medical and surgi- cal weight loss. When patients feel that their care team listens to them, they’re more likely to be highly involved and proactive with their care. That’s why Vanderbilt Health’s marketing com- munications and clinical teams worked cross-functionally to identify pivotal moments and pain points in a patient’s care path when digital communication could help alleviate confusion and stress. From there, an informed digital journey was created for each bundle to address specific health needs—automating many aspects of preventive care. For example, the MyMaternityHealth
bundle delivers precise communication at key points of the pregnancy journey. When pregnant women are at a gesta- tional age of 8-10 weeks, the program sends information-packed emails to proactively address common early symp- toms and concerns, as well as develop a patient navigator connection to make it easier to ask questions. At a gestational age of 17-19 weeks, the patient receives communication tailored to address
hcinnovationgroup.com | MARCH/APRIL 2023
certain pregnancy-related conditions that can occur during this period, such as hypertension and gestational diabe- tes. The communication also includes content tailored to the patient’s support person—often a spouse or close family member—that serves to create an even larger team caring for the patient. This educational messaging, which features at-home care instructions and hints for self-care, ensures the patient is better able to manage their condition. These digital touch points are written from the voice of a bundles patient navigator who facilitates all non-clinical needs, such as booking appointments, navigat- ing the health system, providing help- ful resources and answering questions. VHES and Vanderbilt marketing teams work together to help employers com- municate these benefits to employees in a personalized, non-jargon way. The cross-departmental Employer
Success Program features a library of assets detailing the bundles’ features and promoting their advantages to both an employee’s health and an employer’s bottom line. This human-technology hybrid
approach is working. In its first year using the MyMaternityHealth bundle, Metro Nashville Public Schools saw employee engagement with the pro- gram and communication increase. The average open email rate for MyMaternityHealth users was 68 percent with a click-through rate of 42 percent —significantly higher than the industry benchmarks where the open email rate for health care communications is only 22 percent and the click-through rate is 3 percent. In addition, maternity bundle patients gave the program rave reviews, as evidenced by an impressive Net Promoter Score of 95. Most important, these patients are experiencing dra- matically better health outcomes, such as 25 percent fewer C-sections and 16 percent lower NICU utilization. The suc- cessful MyMaternityHealth model has expanded, with nine more bundles being added to the portfolio in the past three years: MyHearingHealth for cochlear implant surgery, MySpineHealth for spine surgery, three MyOrthoHealth bundles for osteoarthritis and knee and hip pain; two MyWeightLossHealth bundles for surgical and medical weight loss; MyUrologyHealth for kidney stone treatment; and MyRecoveryHealth for substance use disorders. HI
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