Improve Heart Health with CareMessage
THE PROBLEM
Medication Adherence and More
“Medication nonadherence is a major public health concern, especially as it relates to chronic disease prevention and management. Approximately 20% to 30% of medication prescriptions are never filled, and patients do not continue treatment as prescribed in about 50% of cases. Annually in the United States, medication nonadherence accounts for 125,000 deaths, 11% of hospitalizations, and $100 billion to $300 billion in additional spending.”
-from the Million Hearts Toolkit
THE SOLUTION
Using CareMessage to Improve Heart Health For Patients
CareMessage offers pre-built messages about hypertension, cholesterol, and other heart health topics such as healthy eating, stress reduction, physical activity, and medication adherence.
Our customers utilize these programs to provide personalized outreach to patients, and close gaps in care. Learn from real CareMessage customers below!
Crescent Care in New Orleans, LA
CrescentCare participated in Million Hearts® 2022, a national initiative from the CDC to prevent one million heart attacks and strokes within five years. It focuses on implementing a small set of evidence-based priorities and targets that can improve cardiovascular health for all.
CrescentCare wanted to validate whether texting would be a beneficial tool for educating and monitoring patients with hypertension. To test this they:
- Created a custom hypertension education and engagement campaign in CareMessage.
- Utilized six Outreach messages, with one sent per week for six weeks.
- Ran the campaign twice: initially piloted with 20 patients, then with 100 patients.
The Results:
- The program was completed with a 100% retention rate!
- Crescent Care uncovered gaps in self-monitoring of blood pressure, for which they could develop future programs.
Key Learnings
- A need for health literacy program to help understand the effect of medication and receive accurate information about blood pressure goals.
- They gained insights to help guide messaging best practices for their patients.
- They learned additional ways to personalize messaging for better response rates.
Five Rivers Health Center in Dayton, OH
87.07% — 2021 UDS Statin Therapy for the Prevention and Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease (top 10%)
Five Rivers implemented several strategies to achieve and maintain their successful Statin Therapy programs.
- Shared medical record- They use a local hospital system’s Epic EMR, so if patients are being managed by a cardiologist in that network, meds are updated in their system.
- Clinical pharmacists- Five Rivers has clinical pharmacists on staff that identify patients who should be on a statin and can provide interventions in-clinic.
- Focus on med adherence measures- Along with their value-based contracts, this helps them identify patients who should be on a statin and are either not adherent or not being prescribed the correct dosage.
- Current resident QI project- This project focuses on patients at high risk of cardiac events and identifies patients who are being under-prescribed.
- Using pre-visit planning tools- Five Rivers uses the Azara Population Health Management tool to identify patients at the point of care who should be on a statin. That information is fed into CareMessage and patients are texted accordingly.
RESOURCES
Download a guide with additional data and tips.
