Intermountain a finalist for Hearst Health Prize for Pioneering Team-Based Care

The 2017 Hearst Health Prize is awarded to an organization or individual for their outstanding contributions towards improvement in the United States’ population health.

Intermountain was chosen as a finalist from a highly competitive field based on their achievements in mental health integration. Approximately 43 million American adults (18 percent of the total adult population) suffer from mental illness. Starting in 2000, Intermountain embedded mental health screening and treatment into primary care and select specialty practices, utilizing a team-based approach to help patients and their families manage the complexity of both mental and physical health.

Impact of program, based on a retrospective longitudinal cohort study between 2003 and 2013 (data of 113,453 unique patients) comparing Team-Based Care to Traditional Practice Medicine:

• A dramatically higher rate of patients in team-based practices were screened for depression — which allowed care providers to provide medical and behavioral interventions earlier — compared to patients in traditional practices. 46.1 percent of patients in team-based practices were diagnosed with active depression compared to 24.1 percent in traditional practices.
• Team-based practices showed 24.6 percent of patients adhered to diabetes care protocols, including regular blood glucose testing, compared to 19.5 percent in traditional practices — which demonstrated how well patients engaged with care teams in working together to manage their health.
• Also, 48.4 percent of patients in team-based practices had a documented self-care plan to help them manage their health conditions, compared to 8.7 percent in traditional practices.
• Likewise, 85.0 percent of patients in team-based practices had controlled high blood pressure, compared to 97.7 percent in traditional practices (although the care teams involved in the study didn’t focus on blood pressure like they did on depression and diabetes). This is an area for further study Intermountain plans to undertake.

Patients in team-based medical practices also used fewer healthcare services and had lower total costs, according to the study. Data showed that per 100 person years:

• The rate of emergency room visits was 18.1 for patients in team-based practices versus 23.5 visits for patients in traditional practices, which is a reduction of 23.0 percent.
• The rate of hospital admissions was 9.5 for patients in team-based practices versus 10.6 in traditional practices, which is a reduction of 10.6 percent.
• The number of primary care physician encounters was 232.8 for patients in team-based practices versus 250.4 for patients in traditional practices, which is a reduction of 7.0 percent.
• Payments to providers were $3,400 for patients in team-based practices versus $3,515 for patients in traditional practices, which is a savings of 3.3 percent. The payments were less than the investment costs Intermountain incurred in creating the team-based practice model.

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association and the Quality Maternity Quality Care Collaborative at Stanford University are the other finalists. The three finalists will present 17^th Annual Population Health Colloquium in Philadelphia on March 27, 2017 at a poster session. The $100,000 Hearst Health Prize will be awarded the next morning.

Additional information about the Hearst Health Award at http://www.jefferson.edu/HearstHealthPrize.

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Intermountain Healthcare is a Utah-based, not-for-profit system of 22 hospitals, 185 clinics, a Medical Group with some 1,300 employed physicians, a health plans division called SelectHealth, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare through high quality and sustainable costs.  For more information about Intermountain, visit intermountainhealthcare.org, read our blogs at intermountainhealthcare.org/blogs, connect with us on Twitter at twitter.com/intermountain and on Facebook at facebook.com/intermountain.