Banner-University Health Plans has developed a care coordination model that allows providers to view patients’ clinical and social data.
Banner-University Health Plans (BUHP), a division of Banner Health, has built a new Banner Navigation Accelerator model, which will streamline and simplify care coordination by providing physicians with a comprehensive view of patients’ clinical and social data at the point of care.
With this new model, providers across the BUHP network will be able to see patients’ physical and mental health history, medication history, and social determinants of health. Providers can then ensure they are effectively meeting patients’ needs, from prescribing medications to referring individuals to appropriate services.
“The Banner Navigation Accelerator is exactly what the name implies—a model that speeds up and streamlines the path to needed behavioral and physical health services while providing linkages to community resources,” said Sandra Stein, MD, medical director for Complete Care, Banner–University Health Plans.
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“Based on HealthBI’s care coordination technology, it really is a first-of-its-kind shared platform that gives providers in different practices a full and current picture of a member’s comprehensive health status.”
The BUHP network developed the Banner Navigation Accelerator in response to providers’ needs for more information on individuals experience behavioral health issues. Network providers described the challenges of obtaining comprehensive medical records from other providers, making it difficult to safely prescribe medications and develop effective treatment plans.
Powered by CareEmpower care coordination technology from HealthBI, the Banner Navigation Accelerator tool extracts, aggregates, and normalizes data from claims, Arizona’s health information exchange, provider-developed care plans, and other resources.
This creates a comprehensive record of patient health that will include provider encounter history, medication history, lab history, hospital admissions, and discharge and transfer alerts.
“A large percentage of health care happens in more than one provider site, particularly for members with behavioral health and physical health comorbidities complicated by substance use disorders. To validate diagnoses, you need an understanding of what’s going on physically,” said Stein.
“To prescribe psychotropic medications and treat substance use disorders, it’s absolutely essential to know what’s been prescribed by the physical health care provider. All these answers can now be found right within the Banner Navigation Accelerator.”
For patients struggling with substance abuse, providers will be able to refer the appropriate resources for health and recovery. This will be a critical feature for patients who are vulnerable to self-medicating.
“One provider informed me that a system like Banner Navigation Accelerator could have kept one of his patients out of the hospital after he was unable to prescribe the right medications and initiate interventions in time to avert a crisis,” Stein said.
The Banner Navigation Accelerator will be accessible for BUHP providers on September 30, 2019. Network providers who have used the system are already seeing improvements in care delivery.
“Given the extraordinary physical and behavioral health challenges faced by people with autism, I’m probably even more excited than most about a new shared platform for integrating health care,” said Kyle Lininger, director of integrated care at Intermountain Centers.
“Previously, we had to rely on patients’ parents to give us information about what was going on physically in the home. In the Banner Navigation Accelerator, we have an integrated chart, including emergency department visits and other provider encounters. We can even access social determinants of health information to understand what’s going on at home that impacts treatment.”
The Banner Navigation Accelerator is deployed to nearly 70,000 clinical sites across the country, and supports providers in seven different Medicaid managed health plans in Arizona alone.
“As a national company with deep roots in the local community, we are honored to play a role in Banner–University Health Plans’ bold reversal of what has been a decades-long problem; a badly fragmented health care system. We look forward to working closely with the Banner team to vastly improve the medical and behavioral outcomes of members in our community,” said Claire Zimmerman, vice president of product at HealthBI.
Date: October 16, 2019
Source: Health IT Analytics
