ChristianaCare is changing the way it outsources medical technology to try to improve its patient’s outcomes.
Previously, the health system would put out a request for proposal for a one-time financial transaction when it needed medical equipment.
But ChristianaCare recently signed a five-year contract with Dublin, Ireland-based Medtronic—one of the world’s largest medical technology companies. Under the agreement, ChristianaCare and Medtronic will share the financial risk of patient outcomes. If patients get sick and run up the cost of care, the two companies each take a loss. If a patient remains healthy, the two share in the savings.
ChristianaCare Chief Digital and Information Officer Randy Gaboriault, M.S., calls the partnership a "game-changer." He says it will prioritize preventing high-cost chronic diseases using digital technology.
“We really think about meeting patients where they are in terms of what I’ll define as the most important real estate for health care in the future, and that’s basically the screen on your phone,” said Gaboriault.
Delaware’s Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) has made efforts recently to modernize the way Delaware medical providers collect data by offering mini-grants for joining the Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN). Some providers still keep records on pad and paper.
Gaboriault says in its new partnership with Medtronic, ChristianaCare seeks to move beyond keeping electronic medical records to use data to make decisions in real time.
“Now we really think about, ‘how do you actually at the point of the origination of that digital data, return it immediately back into the intelligence of machine learning and into the algorithms to immediately begin affecting the way you may clinical care decisions?’” he said.
ChristianaCare says the partnership will begin with an initiative to identify and monitor patients being prescribed opioids for pain management who are at risk of a condition called opioid-induced ventilatory impairment—where the opioids affect breathing and may cause the patient to stop breathing.
It says it’s also looking to reduce costly hospitalizations by addressing chronic heart diseases and diabetes.