Gundersen Lutheran

Connected Care

Gundersen Lutheran Health System, headquartered in La Crosse, WI, has created “Connected Care,” a national model for efficient, high-quality, end-of-life care. This model incorporates all elements of the health system’s advance care directives program to provide the best possible care for patients nearing the end of life. The program has been named Connected Care because the health system uses an electronic medical record to connect patient information on the care planning process, goals, treatment plans, compliance, outcomes and patient satisfaction—regardless of treatment setting.

Connected Care is designed for patients with terminal chronic conditions. Rather than focusing on disease management, this system is designed to efficiently help patients live as well as possible in their last two years of life. Gundersen also incorporates a palliative care program which helps patients with advanced diseases and their families through the physical, psychosocial and spiritual aspects of aging and dying.

Gundersen Lutheran is currently presenting their Connected Care program as a demonstration to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as this model may be one answer to the issues of access and cost associated with the retirement of the Baby Boomers.

Results

• The initial findings of the Connected Care program have shown a decrease in utilization of services resulting in decreased costs, increased patient satisfaction and increased access to services for others that may need more acute or specialty care;
• Gundersen’s palliative care program significantly reduces hospital costs, approximately $3,500 per patient in billed costs. It also increased admissions to hospice care by 32% since 2007 and reduced hospital readmission rates 6%, versus 18% in a control population;
• Studies at Gundersen Lutheran have shown that patients with advance directives used about $2,000 less in physician and hospital services in the last six months of life;
• The Connected Care model could nationally reduce associated healthcare costs by 25 to 50%;
• In 2008, a study published by The Dartmouth Atlas, which analyzed the care of patients with severe chronic illness, including Medicare spending per patient in the last two years of life, Gundersen was recognized as one of three hospital referral regions in the country—out of 306—to achieve the lowest per patient spending. The study also concluded that Medicare spending could have declined by 25% if all U.S. regions safely adopted the practice patterns of the most efficient regions.

*** Submitted by Joan Curran, Chief of Government Relations and External Affairs, Gundersen Lutheran Health System, jlcurran@gundluth.org

Published: January 26, 2009