The mounting crisis of obesity-related diseases puts an ever greater focus on effectively helping patients make and sustain healthy lifestyle choices. DPS Health understands the immense fiscal responsibility associated with caring for people with diabetes, heart disease or the myriad of other complications of an unhealthy lifestyle. In addition, many healthcare provider organizations (HCPO) simply do not have the staffing resources available to provide their patients with the long-term support and encouragement needed.
By implementing the Virtual Lifestyle Management™ service, healthcare providers will realize numerous benefits
including a strong return on their investment.
Here’s how:
1. Decrease Medical Care Costs
VLM decreases both current and long-term medical expenses associated with caring for patients with the large number of diseases closely linked to obesity, such as diabetes and heart disease.
The National Institute of Health’s ongoing Look AHEAD study confirms the importance of an intensive lifestyle intervention to stave off serious health complications in this at-risk population. This study is a multi-centered, randomized, controlled trial of 5,145 individuals with type 2 diabetes, aged 45–74 years, with BMI >25 kg/m2 (>27 kg/m2 if taking insulin). The ability to achieve and maintain weight loss and better diabetes control through decreased caloric intake and increased physical activity was compared between an intensive lifestyle intervention and diabetes support and education. The first year results demonstrated that those individuals receiving the intensive lifestyle intervention compared to those receiving traditional diabetes support and education, had greater weight loss, improved diabetes control, reduction in cardiovascular disease risk factors and decreased medication needs.
Click here for more details on the NIH Look AHEAD study
Furthermore, California-based Kaiser Permanente performed a study demonstrating that treating a patient who is obese costs $3,000 to $5,000 more per year than treating a similar patient who is not obese. The study also showed that those who participated in a weight management program not only lost more weight than those in the control group, but they also decreased the average number of outpatient visits. At the beginning of the study all subjects averaged 3.2 visits over the previous six months. Those who were part of the weight loss program decreased to 2.8 visits at six months and 2.6 at one year, the comparison group stayed the same.
Click here for more details on the Kaiser Obesity study
2. Decrease Weight Management Service Costs
By streamlining many of the most time-consuming aspects of weight management patient care, the VLM allows healthcare provider organizations to give a greater level of support to a larger number of patients through dramatic improvements in staff efficiency.
3. Expand Scope of Services and Create Additional Sources of Revenue
Many HCPO have looked at expanding the health promotion services available to their patients, but have found the development and implementation to be cost-prohibitive. The VLM can roll out a new health promoting service with very limited capital investment or clinical training time. In addition, VLM creates additional sources of revenue for healthcare provider organizations by allowing for an offering of a greater variety of health promotion services without significant additions of staff or clinicians. For those organizations that currently offer lifestyle support services, they can leverage the VLM to extend their offering to more patients. Studies shows increased services delivered though a web-based program can engage patients that have not been responsive to traditional telephonic or in-person support.
4. Decrease Reporting & Oversight Costs
Administrative efficiency is the hallmark of well-run businesses. Unfortunately, much of the design of the medical compensation and reimbursement system causes this important flow of information to become bogged down, substantially increasing the cost of business. VLM creates a proficient, well-organized system for patient performance reporting that can lead to a decrease in oversight costs.
5. Increase Pay-for-Performance Revenue
As lifestyle diseases have become ever more prevalent, many insurance companies have begun to adopt a pay-for-performance model. It is common for healthcare provider organizations to not capitalize on the benefits of this incentive because their patients are not meeting their behavior-based goals, such as improved diabetes control. In addition, the cost of collecting patients’ performance measures is simply too high. VLM allows for improved patient outcomes and straightforward reporting of patients’ performance broken down into individual patients, specific practice areas and entire populations. This makes the recovery of pay-for-performance revenue easier, allowing for greater compensation.
6. Decrease Customer Service Costs
VLM increases patient performance and satisfaction by providing a positive ongoing interaction between the HCPO and patients. These frequent connections with patients can be leveraged to reduce per patient costs by easing data collection, providing appointment reminders, and informing patients about other relevant issues. In addition, patient satisfaction plays a role in patient adherence to suggested treatments, referrals of new patients, plan evaluation and pay-for-performance. Lastly, the VLM helps improve the return on investment in personal health records and other patient facing technology by driving patients directly to a provider’s patient portal rather then through telephonic or other methods of support.
7. Decrease Marketing Costs
VLM increases patient retention though a greater opportunity for positive brand awareness of the healthcare provider organization. The VLM was designed specifically to allow for a customized look and feel to match existing branded materials. For example, patients log on to the service through the HCPO existing website, giving additional opportunities to generate positive feelings and commitment toward the organization, as well as promote additional services.
8. Increase Media Opportunities
Many health and general publications frequently run editorial content covering emerging healthcare technologies and novel methods to improve patient health, especially in the area of obesity and obesity-related illnesses. As a progressive organization implementing the cutting-edge VLM to better serve this patient population, an HCPO would be able to secure media coverage to aid in promoting the organization as a whole, increasing patient recruitment and retention, as well as positively impacting donations.
We invite you to see a demo of the Virtual Lifestyle Management service. We believe you will immediately see that introducing the VLM into your organization will be economically productive, while simultaneously creating a program that will successfully educate and engage your patients to change their physical activity and nutrition habits so they may live longer, healthier lives.
Click here to contact a DPS Health representative
Click here to learn more about how the VLM works in diabetes centers