Rick Leary, MD
Medical Director, Your Healthcare Plus, the disease management program of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services
Which medical providers is Your Healthcare Plus trying to reach?
Ideally, we would like to reach all the physicians and nurse practitioners who care for Medicaid patients here in Illinois. Practically speaking, I think that the focus is on the primary care doctors here in Illinois.
What is Your Healthcare Plus doing to provide better resources to Illinois medical practices that care for Medicaid patients?
We have a multi-pronged approach. We think we have a lot to offer the physicians and nurse practitioners who care for patients here in Illinois.
1) We offer them evidence-based guidelines around the chronic disease conditions.
2) When we assess the patient, we give them access to the post-assessment letters outlining the issues as we have discussed them with the patient.
3) We give them alerts when our staff is able to find issues with their care that we think need to be addressed.
4) We’re doing some physician profiling here in Illinois.
5) Giving them the information to start registries if they would like to use them for chronic care, and
6) Finally, we are developing continuing medical education around these chronic disease conditions for use by all clinicians here in Illinois, and even outside of Illinois.
How and why were the CME modules chosen and what CME topics will be covered in the future?
Initially when we looked at CME, we knew that to drive true change in practice we needed to focus on Quality Improvement. So the backbone of our CME is going to be the first module on QI. Taking that and using it on the chronic care diseases most commonly seen, we developed in the first year, modules on Asthma and the treatment of depression in primary care. Next year, we will be developing further modules on Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease, Congestive Heart Failure, Diabetes and the treatment of Substance Abuse in practice.
How are CME modules helpful to physician’s participation in the “Your Healthcare Plus” program?
We know that primary care providers need CME credits for re-certification and licensure. We are happy to provide that opportunity to those primary care providers. We feel that the CME offered by YHP offers an alternative to many of the pharma-supported and funded programs that are out there, The YHP CME modules were developed with needs assessments based on surveys done with actual primary care practices. And, in addition, they are offered free of charge.
How can a medical office use the QI modules?
We believe that this quality improvement will drive real change in patient care and foster a reliance on a team-based approach to patient care, as well as a process-driven approach.
What professional education benefits do physicians get from the CME and QI improvement modules?
In addition to the basic CME educational credits that they need, these modules will quality for completion of Part IV of the American Board of Family Medicine re-certification. We also give offices and clinicians the opportunity to have a team come to their office and provide in-office CME training and process improvement around chronic conditions.
How do patients benefits from QI modules and CME?
The efficiency in quality of care is improved in offices that practice these quality improvement techniques. They get consistent evidence-based care, and they have and energized and empowered health care team delivering their care when they visit the offices and in between office visits.
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