Visionary medicine: Being a leader in proactive care

By Rob Ferguson, MD, Peaks Region CMO

We often think of leadership in terms of official titles and responsibilities. While formal leadership is important to clarity and decision making, I’d like to focus on the way that every one of us can be a leader in today’s healthcare space. Specifically, in leading in proactive care.

A great example of this is found in a recent story out of Butte, MT. Becky Wozniak, a nurse practitioner at the Heart and Vascular clinic, noticed a prescription refill for a patient who had been on a medication for some time but hadn’t been to clinic for three years. She called him and encouraged him to come in. Dr. Carlos Albrecht, his cardiologist, noticed signs, ordered tests and determined the patient needed to be flown immediately for emergency open-heart surgery. The right side of his heart was 95% blocked. While the patient had not yet noticed being symptomatic, he was severe. If they had waited for him to seek symptomatic care on his own timeline, he likely would not have experienced the same positive outcome.

We have an opportunity to lead the way in terms of proactive care. I encourage you to take on the role of influencer in this space – to embrace our vision and foster the culture of a model healthcare system. 

In particular, I invite you to think proactively and ask: How can we care for the patient that’s not right in front of us? What processes and habits can we build with our teams to spot the opportunities to intervene upstream of illness? How can we be the drivers of change so that community members access preventive care, not just care when they have a problem?

This challenge is for all of us, from primary care to specialty medicine. Every interaction with a patient is an opportunity. Regardless of the reason for their call or visit, are we looking at the whole person and not just the narrow issue at hand? Are we thinking about the patient who isn’t in our clinic, but needs to be? What creative and thoughtful way can we influence patients who haven’t scheduled routine preventive screenings such as mammograms, colonoscopies and skin cancer checks? How are you intervening in response to early warning signs such as elevated blood pressure, bad cholesterol, or changes in mood and energy?

We have an enormously wonderful opportunity in our region to connect existing and new patients with proactive, preventive care. About one fourth of the patients who seek treatment at our emergency departments haven’t seen a primary care provider in the past year. Connecting patients without an established PCP to an Intermountain PCP within 15 days of their visit is a top strategy we’ll be pursuing in the Peaks Region. 

As we leverage predictive analytics and smart prompts, we can magnify how we proactively care for and care about members in our community the way our team did in Butte, rather than waiting for them to be severe and symptomatic. Thank you for being an influential leader in your clinic and your service line by keeping a vision of proactively caring for our patients.  

I look forward to hearing your ideas and successes!