Summa Health Network, LLC – one of the country’s first providers to use EmmiPrevent – improves screening rates for diabetic retinopathy
Emmi Solutions Launches EmmiPrevent™ to Drive Patient Action and Support Population Health Management
<0> Ritz CommunicationsPatty Keiler, 312-550-5394 </0>
Emmi Solutions, LLC, the leader in outcomes-driven patient engagement, has expanded its suite of solutions with the introduction of EmmiPrevent™. The new offering is helping healthcare providers, like Summa Health Network, LLC, address gaps in care by motivating their patients to take preventive actions, such as scheduling screenings, getting vaccinations or talking to their doctor.
Emerging models of care have made population health management a business imperative. As such, many providers are implementing technology to enhance preventive care and cost-effectively engage their patient population in a patient-centered way.
“Emmi Solutions has a long history of anticipating and responding to the evolving challenges of health systems with new solutions that quickly fill voids and demonstrate proven value for providers and patients,” says Devin Gross, CEO of Emmi Solutions. “Emmi offers a complete solution that facilitates engagement in all settings across the continuum of care, and more and more that means engaging patients outside of walls of the hospital– from transitions in care to preventive care.”
The new solution combines Emmi’s unique communication style with the efficiency of automated, interactive voice response (IVR) calls to contact patients identified as having a gap in care. It also offers easy-to-understand, multimedia patient engagement content for which Emmi is known. The ultimate goal of EmmiPrevent is to motivate patients to schedule an appointment and drive healthy behaviors. EmmiPrevent campaigns have the capability to address critical quality measures like colonoscopy screenings, mammography, A1c tests and flu vaccination. Other preventive health issues are being added at a rapid pace.
Summa Health Network, LLC – an organization that represents more than 1,400 physicians throughout Summa Health System, and one of the largest integrated healthcare delivery systems in Ohio – was one of the first users of EmmiPrevent and has used the solution to increase eye screenings in diabetic patients with impressive results. Diabetic retinopathy is a potentially blinding eye disease that affects nearly half of people with diabetes. If not caught through screening, it can silently and gradually erode vision. Of those patients with diabetes successfully engaged by EmmiPrevent, 23 percent went on to either have an eye exam or to perform another requested action with their eye doctor.
“These results are encouraging because, if caught early, surgery or other treatments can prevent 90 percent of patients from progressing to serious vision loss,” said Dr Mark Terpylak D.O., Physician Director of Clinical Integration at Summa Health Network, LLC and President of NewHealth Collaborative, an Accountable Care Organization formed by Summa and a group of about 203 local physicians. “Many diabetic patients go without screenings and are not aware of the gravity of diabetic retinopathy, so moving the needle on this issue will make a huge impact not just on quality of life but financially as it’s such a costly disease once it progresses.”
Summa, which became a Medicare ACO this past summer, is focused on its goal of delivering care aligned with the 33 distinct quality measures required of ACOs. Summa is interested in finding effective ways to close care gaps and improve health across their patient population, with the hope of creating a higher quality, more efficient health system. “I can see EmmiPrevent as a tool to help us to meet many of the requirements for ACOs, especially now that both patients and staff have responded so positively to the diabetic retinopathy screening program,” said David Littlejohn RN, Quality Improvement Director at Summa Health Network, LLC.
Emmi Solutions and Summa Health Network are co-hosting a webinar on Wednesday, December 12 at 12pm EST to discuss pilot results of the EmmiPrevent campaign. To register for the webinar, visit .
Emmi Solutions is the pioneer of outcomes-driven patient engagement. Emmi offers a complete solution that engages patients and has repeatedly shown that it can improve clinical and financial outcomes. Emmi uses a multi-modal platform to deliver actionable information to patients while supporting the goals of traditional and emerging models of care. Emmi programs have been prescribed to over four million patients-using language they understand, at their convenience, and on devices they already own. Emmi enables providers to track compliance and measure the outcomes of effective patient engagement. For more information, visit . Follow us on and find us on .
Summa Health System is one of the largest integrated healthcare delivery systems in Ohio. Encompassing a network of hospitals, community health centers, a health plan, a physician-hospital organization, a multi-specialty physician organization, research and multiple foundations, Summa is nationally renowned for excellence in patient care and for exceptional approaches to healthcare delivery. Summa's clinical services are consistently recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (Magnet status), , Thomson Reuters and The Leapfrog Group. Summa also is a founding partner of the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron. For more information, visit or find us on Facebook at and Twitter at .