ARMC Receives Prestigious Award

Arrowhead Regional Medical Center was recently presented the prestigious Quality Leaders Award for Ambulatory Care Redesign by the California Association of Public Hospitals and Safety Net Institute at the 2016 CAPH/SNI Annual Conference: Thriving Patients, Caring Systems, Healthy Communities. For more than 20 years, CAPH/SNI has delivered the Quality Leaders Awards to recognize outstanding initiatives across California’s public health care systems, and ARMC was recognized for its High Utilization Patient Care Outreach Program. The awards luncheon and ceremony took place with public health care system leadership, state and local officials and their staffs, and representatives from advocacy organizations and foundations. HUPCO, the ARMC program that won the award, is described as an aggressive nurse care management program designed to improve underlying conditions that have historically led to frequent hospitalization. The program identifies patients at risk for becoming high utilizers, provides education and team support aimed at keeping these patients healthy and connects them to community resources. RN Care Managers work with patients and their families and caregivers to assess their individual needs and priorities, coordinate appropriate care, improve health literacy and help patients overcome their fears about being seriously ill with limited resources. A three-tier classification system was established to identify those at risk of becoming high utilizers and to determine the appropriate level of intervention. The HUPCO tier consists of patients who have had three or more Inpatient and/or Emergency Department visits within a calendar year, three or more co-morbidities and the simultaneous use of ten or more medications. This approach has led to a 27 percent decrease in length of hospital stay, a 35 percent decrease in inpatient visits and a 64 percent drop in ED visits.