Colorado Retina Recognized As A TCPi Practice
Dr. Alan Kimura, TCPi National Faculty and President and Managing Partner of https://retinacolorado.com/ Colorado Retina Associates [CRA], part of Colorado PTN, was invited to present the story of CRA's TCPi-catalyzed practice transformation at the TCPi Support & Alignment Network Summit: Professional Associations as Partners in Delivering Value-Based Care in Baltimore this past August 2019.
Colorado Retina's enterprise-wide practice transformation focused on clinical excellence, business intelligence, and health policy goals. Dr. Kimura stated that artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics estimate that the chronic care patient load will double in the next 20 years, and providers should be aware of this and prepare. He shared the importance of building a practice’s data infrastructure, and cautions providers not to oversimplify their data results and avoid the urge to “cherry pick the easy cases or lemon drop the hard cases.” In the case of reducing opioid prescriptions, CRA demonstrated immediate positive change results when MDs were shown their prescription data. Gathering data and showing it to providers can lead to great change. CRA’s top transformation successes were due to using generic drugs to reduce patient and system costs and creating an ambulatory surgery center to reduce hospitalization. Additionally, if providers are able to see patients the same day in a clinic this also greatly reduces ED use and cost. Though it does have some internal costs, triaging calls will save payers money, and Dr. Kimura emphasized it is the “right thing to do.” CRA staff are carefully recruited, trained and retained amidst the “war for talent” he described as a massive training burden for providers in the region. Staff are engaged and empowered to identify and implement solutions for change. Dr. Kimura’s practice tracks a net promoter score for patient satisfaction which is currently at 87%. Though, he stated, “we’re not going to sit still” until it’s above 90%.
Colorado Retina had the honor to join a government funded project, supported by TCPi, to test whether large-scale practice transformation to value-based care could be produced. TCPi is coming to its planned end after four years and $700,000,000 dollars invested in the healthcare initiative. CRA was lucky enough to be hand-selected, amongst a number of practices to participate in TCPi — and the very first practice in the entire State of Colorado to pass all 5 of TCPi’s Aims. To celebrate the monumental success and movement, CRA was recently honored in a signing ceremony with Governor Hickenlooper in his office at Colorado's Capitol building, in Denver, CO.
To learn more about the TCPi initiative view their August Newsletter: mailchi.mp/76178cfd3aba/tcpi-expo-newsletter-2019-updated
