Allina Hospitals & Clinics

Creating an Integrated System of Care

Allina Hospitals & Clinics is a not-for-profit network of hospitals, clinics and other health care services, providing care throughout Minnesota and western Wisconsin. In an effort to provide more effective, efficient and patient-centered care, Allina attempted to integrate their 50 independent clinics, 700 physicians and 14 hospitals.

To integrate their systems, Allina implemented an EMR, practice management and lab information system to achieve a “one patient, one record” across all clinics and hospitals. They also redesigned core care processes around evidence-based medicine for higher reliability and predictability in outcomes and implemented team-based care to integrate patient care across the health system.

To achieve these goals, Allina had to create the right structure and culture for success. This included such methods as:

Clarifying a vision and creating a consistent message;
Pairing physician and administrative leadership at all levels;
Aligning goals for leaders, physicians and staff
Creating transparency of results
Creating a tenacious approach to follow-up

Results:

The percentage of patients meeting All five diabetes care criteria rose from 11% to 28.6%.
Chlamydia screening increased from 64% to 86%.
CMS core measures increased from 68.4% to 94.9% for heart failure; from 89.8% to 94.3% for acute myocardial infarction; from 55.4% to 88.9% for pneumonia.
Patients seeing their own provider when they wished to increased from 63% to 73%.
Allina Hospitals and Clinic won the 2008 The American Medical Group Association’s (AMGA) Acclaim Award, which is presented each year to one medical group or other organized system of care that documents sustainable gains in moving toward the IOM’s ideal healthcare system.

***For further information, please contact Julie Sanderson-Austin, VP of Quality, American Medical Group Association, JSanderson-Austin@amga.org.

Published: January 26, 2009