Dr Ryan Stice Shares Strategy on Expanding Access to Care With Virtual Population Health Teams

At The American Journal of Managed Care^® Institute for Value-Based Medicine^® event, hosted in partnership with Sutter Health in San Francisco, California, Ryan Stice, PharmD, BCPS, chief pharmacy officer for Sutter Health, shared his strategy for extending services to the full community in the presentation, "Expanding Access to Care Using Virtual Population Health Teams."

In this interview, he explains the approach's impact on improving access to care for patients with cardiometabolic conditions. These teams provide ongoing support and coaching between physician visits, ensuring medication adherence and addressing financial barriers to treatment.

Transcript

Can you provide an overview of the concept of virtual population health teams and how they contribute to expanding access to care?

So typically, a patient sees their cardiologist or care provider once or twice a year, but their care really requires a lot of extensive follow-up in between those visits. And so, the virtual services really partner the virtual team with the patient through a collaborative practice agreement with the physician. And from there, we're able to see the patient weekly, every other week, whenever it's really needed. We become a health coach in a way, with a pharmacy experience and background, to help bring them from zero medications for heart failure to 4 medications for heart failure. We find that just leaving a physician's office with that prescription is not enough—that they need that coach, that frequent follow-up, that partner in their journey to achieve the right level of care that they need.

How does this approach address the high burden of cardiometabolic conditions in the US?

So, we're essentially opening up more access points for patients to our health care system. They can see a provider in the office in a traditional setting but then have access in between those appointments to this care team that’s on top of how they're progressing. It can also help them with cost-related issues for medications. Many of these medications are incredibly expensive. So many patients today have very-high-deductible health plans and so we're able to help them navigate to financial assistance resources that help them cover those costs.

And also just address their questions. Only about 30% of new prescriptions are actually filled by the patient and continued. And so we're all about taking that prescribed treatment after the physician has diagnosed the patient, making sure the patient actually continues on the therapy and that we see the true population health benefit and change in their outcomes that we’re intended to provide.