Systems thinking: How healthcare leaders are reinventing patient-centered chronic care – Becker’s Hospital Review

System thinking is an approved approach to healthcare organizations to give better patient care. By designing programs that focus on patients as an entire individual and care team member, as well as financial stability, teams can promote systemic and cultural changes that support better care for chronic circumstances.

One in Baker Webinar, Refilling chronic care: a system approach to a system of kind, patient-centered innovation Sponsored by Voltors Cluver, three healthcare leaders discussed how the system thinking is changing cancer care and creating a new standard for personal treatment and organizational improvement:

• Don S. Dijon, MD, Director, Pelvic Malignasse Program and Hematology-OunCology Out Petail Clinic, Brown University Health Cancer Institute; Director of Medical Oncology, Road Island Hospital; Founder, Oncology Sexual Health First Respondence Program (Providence, RI)
• Jessica Quinlan-Woodward, RN, Manager, Oncology Nurse Navigation, Elina Health (Miniapolis)
• Holi Urban, MD, Vice President, Business Development-Strati, Clinical Effectiveness, Voltors Clove Health

There are three major takeaairs from his conversation:

1. A sympathy for care, evidence-centered approach is the northern star for system thinking.

   When organizations apply thinking systems to take care of cancer, they consider a full patient travel with a care passage. To ensure that patients have an easy experience from beginning to end, cooperation between all care team members is necessary.

   Ms. Quinalan-Woodward said that thinking systems for cancer care can be particularly challenging because oncology treatment is complex and multimodal. “For that complexity we need to really communicate well in many departments and to ensure that care distribution in departments and interventions is coordinated,” he said.

   Members of the team of Allina Health are trained to see the patient as an entire person. Patients are people who diagnose cancer, but they also have family, jobs, hobbies and dreams. “When we make a deep evaluation of a person-mind, body and soul-we consider that person better and are more effective in planning a care that actually meets their needs and goals,” said Ms. Quinalan-Woodward.

   Dr. Dizon agreed that the patient should be considered a part of the care team to ensure shared decisions at every stage of the journey. This requires two-way communication with patients, whether it is through patient advisory committee or other forms of market research. “As I consider how to strengthen and increase the cancer health system in a crowded market like Boston, the part of the solution is listening to what people want and we have responded to,” he said.

2. System thinking balances the patient in welfare with economic stability.

   The cost of oncology care in the United States is a growing concern. About 48% of oncology care expenses are powered by acute hospital care. The best practices to reduce unplanned acute hospital care include identifying patients at risk for unplanned care, using enriched care coordination models and standardized for symptomatic management, using evidence-based care routes.

   Dr. Holi Urban, a healthcare technology expert at System Thinking, described how medical oncology and hematology consultants in Philadelphia developed evidence-based symptomatic symptoms management protocols that nurses and on-call doctors followed equally. “Since they implemented these routes, the percentage of patients sent to the emergency department as a result of clinical calls decreased by 60%,” he said.

   Avoiding unnecessary acute care, the patient’s experience was better and the hospital also saw improvement in financial results. Dr. “This is about designing the system for the result you made,” Urban said. “If you can give a good financial result and a good patient result, it is a win and it allows the programs to be durable.”

3. When deliberately deployed, technology can run individual patient intervention.

   When it comes to a system-level approach for oncology, Dr. Deson believes that one of the largest possible benefits for cancer centers is personalizing care with technology. “We need to use AI to support risk stratification so that we can find people with certain conditions and pull into care routes, so not all are treated in the same way,” he said.

   Hospitals and health systems that successfully deploy technologies are intentional about their plans and get support from senior leaders. In Allina Health, for example, Ms. Quinlan-Woodward uses a Sbar model (status, background, evaluation, recommendation to move forward) before suggesting a new technique.

   Dr. Dizon underlined the importance of implementation science when deploying technologies to support the patient’s care. “Before you apply, what are the obstacles, what will be the need of data, what is the last point, what are the short -term matrix? Do you do groundwork before investing and deliberately do about why you want some programs,” he said.