For a peek into the future of population health management, a visit to Stanford Coordinated Care, a new clinic in northern California that is part of Stanford Health System, is in order. Staffed with three part-time physicians, one nurse and a handful of medical assistants, the clinic targets a select group of patients that health care cost accountants might just as soon send elsewhere. “We are recruiting the top 10% of the riskiest patients,” says the clinic’s co-director and physician, Ann Lindsay. “Our patients usually have several conditions.”
The clinic is paid on a specially negotiated capitated basis with Stanford’s own health plan and negotiations with other commercial payers to treat their at-risk patients are under way, Lindsay says. To manage these patients — who typically have such chronic conditions as diabetes, asthma and hypertension — the clinic relies on a mini-arsenal of IT including an electronic health record, a clinical data warehouse and an analytics engine. “We offer an intensive model of caring for complex chronic conditions,” says Lindsay, describing a model which sometimes includes house visits by physicians and other staff.
