Care Continuity: the air traffic control for your health system

Hey Hospitalogists! It’s Blake here.

I recently connected with the Care Continuity team and for health system folks, Care Continuity has a great value prop to get patients navigated within your network, transition them between care settings, and help you with your overall ambulatory strategy through better analytical information, ultimately preventing network leakage.

I’ve put together a handy guide on the key things you need to know about Care Continuity. Feel free to reach out to them if you have any more nuanced questions.

I personally think their service is worth a conversation. Here’s what you need to know.

This essay is a sponsored post in partnership with Care Continuity. I write these posts for companies with offerings or missions I believe can provide value-adds for Hospitalogy subscribers, many of whom work with/for hospitals or provider organizations that deal with issues like patient navigation, network integrity and leakage on a daily basis.

If you’re interested in a sponsored deep dive, please reach out to [email protected]!

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All About Care Continuity: Key Takeaways

If you read nothing else about them, here’s what you need to know about Care Continuity:

1. They help patients navigate their care by removing obstacles in their “care journey,” such as setting up a PCP or specialist visit within your network of physicians.
2. They also help health systems reduce patient outmigration and grow profitable service lines such as orthopedics and cardiology.
3. Their trained navigators and tech stack allow health systems and risk bearing orgs to take on complex patient populations and unique, one-off provider network characteristics – they’re flexible and can work through a variety of circumstances.
4. ROI for health systems include appropriate increases in network utilization, a better patient experience, happier physicians, network leakage prevention, and an ability to smartly respond to new market entrants. All of these help health systems leverage their network and improve financial performance.

Check out their website and get in touch with them here.

Care Continuity: the “Care Traffic Control” for your health system

In the era of aggressive outpatient migration and physician alignment, heightened patient experience, and advanced population health initiatives, it’s more important than ever to make the patient journey through the health system seamless. Patients expect more in 2024 – simple as that. Physicians are, of course, busier than ever. Competition for market share is a daily battle. Having connective tissue that connects services together like Care Continuity helps alleviate lots of pressure points facing hospitals today.

As I dove deeper into Care Continuity and understood pain points in 2024 through conversations within the industry, one thing became abundantly clear: many health systems desperately need a master air traffic control system for their networks. Someone that can manage the flow of patients in the network, helping to “load balance” referrals and making it easier on physician offices. These functions tighten the alignment between the points of care within the network and drive ROI for your organization.

So beyond the air traffic control metaphor, what does Care Continuity actually do, and what specific pain points do they solve for health systems?

Let’s dive in!

Care Continuity’s Smarter Patient Navigation

Patient navigation is a growing and evolving space as patient experience and consumerism drives the industry forward. At a high level, navigation involves installing care teams or other user-friendly features for patients alongside health system personnel to make sure each patient’s journey is seamless.

But Care Continuity takes navigation even a step further. The secret sauce lies in the technology and a flexible model to match the patients needs to the appropriate next point of care in the health system network – working alongside case management, physician offices, and health system/clinical leadership to ensure a smooth care journey, improve the patient experience, and “load-balance” referrals throughout the network.

Care Continuity’s Solutions

To that end, Care Continuity has developed a sophisticated platform for smarter patient navigation. Here’s a breakdown of their various solutions for health systems:

• Navigator Predict: prioritization algorithms that aligns patients for navigation with the in-network providers;
• Advanced Navigation Workflow: software that guides the patient’s care journey to ensure a seamless experience and high-quality outcomes;
• Staffed Concierges: highly-trained personnel who work with patients, family members, case managers, and other clinicians to facilitate a smooth transitions of care for the patient;
• Analytics & Insights: purpose-built analytics platform that provides key insights on your patients and your provider network helping you to drive smarter network intelligence – more visibility on patient status, better information exchange along the entire patient journey to help drive clinical decision-making

Care Continuity helps your patients navigate the complexities of your health system network ensuring a positive experience throughout their care journey. With better data and expert patient navigators, Care Continuity acts in real-time on behalf of health systems to ensure patients seamlessly follow their care journey, getting them needed appointments quickly without causing strain on the network. Strategy teams get better access to data and analytics measuring efficacy of the network, including critical information on wait times, leakage and competitive position.

Care Continuity drives Health System ROI

One of my biggest sticking points in writing deep dives like these is making sure those that I write about have real ROI behind their solutions. To that end, here are some real, tangible results Care Continuity (CC) has achieved with notable health system partners of all sizes:

• Keeping patients within aligned networks: With Care Continuity, more than 88% of new patient relationships were with network-aligned providers
• ED Post-Discharge Engagement: Through effective engagement with recently discharged ED patients, CC increased downstream specialty volumes by 10 to 15% (or more) compared to a control group.
• Discharge Plan Compliance: By managing appointments with multiple providers for at-risk patients, Care Continuity’s program supported a 30 – 35% reduction in readmissions
• Overall ROI is clear and defined: For one customer, Care Continuity delivered a 5x ROI while increasing patient satisfaction and reducing unnecessary readmissions within the health system

From a qualitative perspective, there’s also plenty to like around the positive externalities Care Continuity creates. For one, physicians can actually work at the top of their license (i.e., what they were trained to do for years on end) rather than dealing with lower acuity that can be handled by APPs or other clinical workers. For another, I’ve already mentioned the boosted satisfaction rates from patients given Care Continuity’s high touch concierge service working alongside hospital case managers.

Consider the Care Continuity team for your health system

In summary, Care Continuity has a very clear value prop for health systems. Their team:

• Keeps patients within your aligned network (prevents network leakage)
• Understands where and why your patients migrate outside your network for care
• Transitions patients through your aligned network seamlessly to enhance experience
• Stratifies patient visits based on acuity and follow up need using predictive analytics
• Optimizes specialist utilization post-discharge to boost appointment completion rates and maximize appropriate utilization of specialist schedules

The folks I’ve met with care deeply about patients and want their health system partners to succeed. To that end, they’ve built out their pricing to only make money based on the value they provide to the health system.

If you have any more questions, the Care Continuity team is available. Get in touch with Care Continuity to learn more about how to improve ROI through smart patient navigation through your network.

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into a company making a real difference for patients, clinicians, and health systems! Feel free to reach out with any thoughts or comments.