Turbocharging Patient-Centered Care for Low-Risk Heart Attack Patients with Remote Patient Monitoring

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The power of remote patient monitoring

There is limited data comparing remote post-discharge patient treatment to that of standard in-person care, but a new clinical trial has done exactly that.

This multicenter randomized control trial measured safety events, medication adjustment and left ventricular reverse remodeling outcomes.  The subjects were low-risk patients with acute myocardial infarction treated for 6 months after discharge by a centralized nurse practitioner–led telehealth program compared with standard in-person care by a cardiologist. There were no differences in achieved medication doses or indices of left ventricular remodeling.

This clinical trial set out to answer an important question for healthcare in a COVID and post-COVID landscape:

“Is remote post-discharge treatment of low-risk patients with acute myocardial infarction by a centralized nurse clinician team under physician supervision feasible and safe?”

The answer is: Absolutely. In fact, it’s both safe and effective.

What’s next?

Researchers now want to conduct a similar clinical trial with higher-risk patients, in an effort to further test the capabilities of remote intensive patient management and care. Read this impactful new study here:

Remote Postdischarge Treatment of Patients With Acute Myocardial Infarction via JAMA Cardiology

The future is here:

cliexa-PULSE Home Health Monitoring Platform co-developed by cliexa and American College of Cardiology

“Imagine the ability to effectively capture RPM in the cardiology’s major disease states – HTN, CHF, CAD, and AFib in an easy-to-use-tool without all the data overload: Enter cliexa!” Dr. Andrew M. Freeman, MD – Director of Clinical Cardiology and Operations Director Cardiovascular Prevention & Wellness at National Jewish Health

Through the ACC Innovation Program with our partners at the American College of Cardiology (ACC), we have developed one of our latest modules, cliexa-PULSE to digitally transform and ultimately optimize cardiovascular care and outcomes. cliexa-PULSE is a mobile application designed for patients to track their symptoms, medications, episodes, complications and daily activity to manage Atrial Fibrillation providing real-time data to their clinicians. The expansion of cliexa-PULSE in 2021 will provide treatment tracking tools for patients with Hypertension, Congestive Heart Failure and Coronary Artery Disease, as well as launching a population health module. cliexa-PULSE is the ideal mobile app for clinicians to fully leverage patient-reported data, improving treatment decision-making and the overall patient experience. Learn more about cliexa-PULSE HERE

 

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The Role of Digital Health in Quality Reporting

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the role of digital health in quality reporting

The Importance of Quality Reporting

With constant access to the internet, consumers can shop around for the best product and services for almost every scenario. This even includes their healthcare. Patients no longer continue going to the same hospital because they were born there, their family does, or it is closest. Patients can pick and choose their doctor or hospital based on their quality reporting scores, patient outcomes, and cost. Various websites provide this service, as well as Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) or Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) public data.

Whether it is weak quality reports, lackluster patient outcomes, or high costs, patients will seek out other physicians to ultimately find the best care (See Your MIPS Score Stays with You). With the increase in healthcare locations across the country, some patients now have the option to choose their provider and institution at which to receive care. The rise of mobile technology is lending to patients receiving their care at home, saving time and effort on their end while improving the overall patient experience for the healthcare system. This newfound choice creates a greater emphasis on physicians and hospitals to pay attention to their quality reporting and patient outcomes.

The numbers of patients with multiple comorbidities are higher than ever before. These comorbidities and chronic conditions are extremely impactful to the care a physician gives to their patient. In addition, chronic conditions and comorbidities are impactful in understanding the way a patient responds to treatment and recovers from surgeries and other interventions. It is essential that physicians are collecting data, not only thorough past medical history for their patients, but also medications, and family health history.

The Role of Digital Health in Quality Reporting

For a practice to effectively collect this much data for each patient, it is incredibly time-consuming. A significant amount of time is required to not only have the patient read and sign consent forms, but also to complete intake forms for necessary information, and input all of this into the electronic medical record for the physician to read. Time and resources are precious in clinical and hospital settings, which is why it is so important to implement technology that aids clinical and hospital staff in completing this.

cliexa not only digitizes all consent forms and intake questions but discretely integrates each aspect of the clinical forms into the electronic medical record (EMR). Medical data now appears instantly in the EMR, just like a staff member or a medical assistant would have typed it. Medical staff and physicians can then review the information that is already in the EMR and proceed to treat the patient from a well-rounded point of view. cliexa allows the patient to complete their consent and intake forms while away from the clinic. Patients download the cliexa application and complete their paperwork, taking the time constraints away from the clinic or hospital, and allowing the patient to be more thorough in their information.

Receiving accurate and thorough past medical history, medications, and family history have huge effects on patients’ outcomes and quality reporting. A physician can use cliexa to identify a higher incidence of heart disease in a patient’s family and use this information to not only order tests and screen for heart disease in their patient but also discuss weight-loss strategies and lifestyle changes [1]. Our platform is designed to aid a physician in their foresight to catch an issue before it arises. This helps ensure physician’s patient outcomes and naturally improves quality reporting. Likewise, a surgeon can utilize cliexa and identify if their patient is a current smoker. They can use this information to assess the increased risk their patient has when consenting to elective surgery [2]. By including that data in their reporting, they are not only protecting themselves but can also start a conversation regarding smoking cessation with that patient.

In a time when quality reporting and patient outcomes not only influence your success as a physician but also how many patients you see and retain, it is more important than ever to partner with cliexa to help you achieve this. It is becoming more important to understand the needs and desires of patients to ensure your MIPS scores do not suffer, and virtual health is one way to address changing patient needs.  While patient experience is subject to change over time, quality reporting, patient outcomes, and physician ratings are only updated every two years. From the time you notice that your data is negative, it will take an additional two years to see if your outcomes have changed positively. Time is of the essence to enhance your data, receive more patients, and improve your quality reporting and patient outcomes.

[1] Moonesinghe, R., Yang, Q., Zhang, Z., & Khoury, M. J. (2019, July 16). Prevalence and Cardiovascular Health Impact of Family History of Premature Heart Disease in the United States: Analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2007-2014. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6662130/

[2] Theadom, A., & Cropley, M. (2006, October). Effects of preoperative smoking cessation on the incidence and risk of intraoperative and postoperative complications in adult smokers: a systematic review. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563647/

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Patient-Reported Outcomes and AI in Pain Management

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Featured image for patient-reported outcomes and AI in Pain Management

Integrated pain management is a specialty that has grown in recent years. Patient-reported outcomes and AI in pain management can provide insights to improve treatment plans. During each visit to a clinician, patients complete assessments to inform their provider about their current conditions. Each of these assessments creates a profile for the patient about their current and ongoing symptoms. Each of these patient-reported outcomes is extremely useful in tracking the success of a treatment plan. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral factor in learning more about these outcomes. AI can be trained to learn how different factors in a patient’s treatment plan affect their outcomes.

With pain management, it is essential to assess each patient’s pain symptoms frequently. By digitally recording responses to patient assessments, these patient-reported outcomes can be tracked more efficiently. To provide more effective treatment plans, pain management providers are using patient-reported outcomes and AI more often.

How does AI in healthcare work?

AI starts with compiling lots of data. In pain management, each time a patient visits their physician, they fill out assessments about their current symptoms and pain levels since their last visit. The provider then takes the information, compiles it, and compares it to each patient’s recent medication and lifestyle changes. In addition to this, the patient may utilize physical therapy or behavioral health resources in their treatment plan. All of these factors come into play when a provider makes decisions about the patient’s ongoing treatment will be. What has worked for them in the past? Are they improving? What else can they try?

This is where AI comes into play. AI and machine learning can take all of these factors and learn what can be an effective treatment plan for each patient. By compiling this data, AI can infer from previous assessments what is more or less likely to work for that patient based on their historical data.

AI recognizes patterns in treatment plans as data becomes available. Using this information can make a well-defined course of action for the healthcare provider. By utilizing these patient-reported outcomes and AI in pain management settings, treatment plans become more successful in pain patients.

Why is Pain Management a focus for AI?

Many different healthcare specialties can use AI with patient-reported outcomes. However, pain management tends to include a myriad of external factors for each patient. Pain management can include patients with medication dependencies, behavioral health diagnoses, and chronic diseases. Because of these factors, it is difficult to accurately weigh each one as a patient treatment plan is formed.

Because the opioid epidemic is a continuing concern for healthcare providers, AI has come into play more heavily. Digital healthcare has become a key player in combating the opioid crisis with remote patient monitoring and risk assessments. Correct dosing for opioid prescriptions is a fine line between addiction and chronic pain in patients. This is why AI has become prevalent in managing opioid use in hospital settings in recent years.

It’s also important to note that pain management is a very iterative an ongoing treatment process, and can differ greatly between patients. For this reason, collecting patient-reported outcomes to derive treatment options has proven to be successful in recent years.

How can I get started using AI in my practice?

cliexa’s pain management platform (cliexa-Ease) incorporates patient assessments and utilizes them to create a comprehensive risk score for each patient. The Symptom Severity Score (FIBR), Dallas Pain Questionnaire (DPS), Medical Outcomes Survey (MOS Core, SF-36), and Pain Disability Index (PDI) are all incorporated into the platform.

As a provider, you can create a risk matrix based on your treatment preferences and utilize this digital tool to streamline patient assessments and risk. Determining risk of a patient is the cornerstone to their treatment plan. Risk assessments assist the healthcare provider to make decisions based on many different factors that can affect a patient’s overall risk. Also, by tracking medication adherence and compliance with each patient will allow providers to better track their symptoms over time. All of these features are included in the cliexa-Ease platform and can help you to better track patient outcomes using remote monitoring and integrated risk assessments.

Learn more about cliexa’s digital platforms.

 

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Tracking the Spread of COVID-19

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tracking the spread of COVID-19

The news of Coronavirus skyrocketing in China peaked during the month of January. At this time, the virus seemed so far away from our reality. Quickly, the virus has spread across the world. The testing for COVID-19 has become more advanced by the week and every day we see hundreds if not thousands more confirmed cases. Track the spread of COVID-19 here.

What can we do to prevent the spread of COVID-19?

As a healthy young individual, the most effective thing you can do is stay home and prevent the spread of this potentially deadly virus. Each citizen plays a large role in spreading the virus to others. The American population who are elderly or immunocompromised are at a higher risk for developing symptoms of the COVID-19 virus. Because of this, ALL citizens are at risk of spreading the virus and should take the quarantine seriously.

The CDC’s guidelines for how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are conservative at this point. Wash your hands frequently and stay away from densely populated areas. This includes restaurants, bars, and stores. To bolster the prevention of the virus, counties in the San Francisco Bay area have placed a “shelter in place” order. Preventative measures like this will likely spread to other large cities in the coming days.

An important resource to note is the CDC’s guidelines for assessing risk in citizens that have potential exposure to the virus. Be sure to know the signs and symptoms of the virus and utilize any local drive-thru testing centers. Many hospitals are allowing at-risk citizens to call their hotline for remote screening of COVID-19. It’s important for citizens to stay up-to-date on recent news and be prepared to stay home in the coming weeks. As the spread of COVID-19 continues to ramp up in the US, it will be important that everyone does their part.

Work from home, avoid crowded areas, and prepare to stay home for at least the next three weeks. Preventing this virus starts with each individual making a choice to change their lifestyle for the better of their communities. The reason that China was able to reduce the spreading of COVID-19 is because they were willing to effectively quarantine.

How can we track the spread of COVID-19 more effectively?

Testing in the United States is slowly climbing. But, because of limited testing kits across the country, hospitals are being sure to utilize tests on only higher-risk citizens. As of now, people who have not been in direct contact with a confirmed case of Coronavirus are considered low-risk. However, citizens living in densely populated areas with high contact should assume that they have been exposed to the virus. Even if they are not tested, low-risk citizens should take all the same precautions as high-risk individuals to decrease the spread of COVID-19.

Digital healthcare technologies have been integral in tracking COVID-19. Here is how some tech companies are helping to control the spread of the virus. cliexa has incorporated the CDC’s risk assessment guidelines into a platform that can compile data and assess the risk of each patient that is worried about their exposure. This platform provides patient-reported data on risk and symptoms to physicians. This helps healthcare professionals better manage the amount of exposure cases across the nation. We are offering free demos of this platform. You can visit our contact page to schedule a time with our team to learn about the COVID-19 screening application offered through the cliexa platform.

 

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cliexa CEO Featured in #AskTheCEO Podcast

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cliexa CEO featured in #AskTheCEO podcast

cliexa’s CEO & Founder, Mehmet Kazgan, is featured in the #AskTheCEO Podcast! The #AskTheCEO Podcast host is Avrohom Gottheil, CEO of #AskTheCEO Media.

In this #AskTheCEO episode, Mehmet and Avrohom sit down and discuss the importance of artificial intelligence in healthcare. During the conversation, the two talk about the importance of utilizing innovative technology. This technology is essential in order to stay at the forefront of patient care. As diseases and viruses continue to evolve over time, new healthcare technologies give rise to revolutionary developments. Data collection and AI capabilities are now moving at a pace to evolve and keep up with new diseases and viruses around the world. It is up to the healthcare industry to utilize tools like cliexa in order to compile data and start improving patient outcomes.

cliexa allows for efficient tracking of data, allowing physicians to compile information and make better, more informed decisions on patient treatment plans. This is based on patient outcomes, symptoms, and treatment plans over time. This way, physicians can collect data on what treatments are more effective than others. They can also track patient medication management

Through AI capabilities, cliexa can help to predict optimized treatment plans based on past data collected. Now that cliexa is available on the Azure Marketplace, more physicians and healthcare systems can implement this technology. The Azure Marketplace offers digital platforms to improve healthcare efficiency for users. To learn more about cliexa’s capabilities and how they can benefit patients, physicians, and payors, contact us to schedule a demo here.

 

 

 

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