Care coordination is crucial in promoting improved health consumerism and contributes to positive health outcomes. Care coordination involves actively engaging patients in their healthcare journey from acute care to chronic care management. Thus, it fosters a sense of responsibility for their well-being and promotes self-management. With empowered patients, the chances of adherence to treatment plans are increased, positively impacting patients’ health outcomes and enhanced health consumerism (Vogus et al., 2020).
Moreover, care coordination ensures a holistic approach to patient care. Social determinants of health and lifestyle factors are adequately addressed to tailor the care plans to the patient’s health needs and relevant factors. Patient-centered care positively influences health outcomes by addressing the broader context of a patient’s life (Karam et al., 2021). When care coordination is implemented in preventive care plans and early intervention strategies, the progression of diseases is substantially reduced, particularly in managing the burden of chronic diseases and improving overall health.
By providing care coordination through HIT, such as EHR and telehealth services, patients are better connected to their healthcare providers. This results in solid adherence to treatment plans and prescribed medications, resulting in better disease management and improved health outcomes (Crowley et al., 2022).
Care coordination requires the involvement of various healthcare professionals from multiple disciplines to deliver coordinated and organized healthcare services to deliver apt and high-quality care treatments to patients. Implementing Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) as a healthcare model augments the effort of collecting substantial data through care coordination (Coran et al., 2021). ACOs focus on fostering collaboration among different healthcare providers. Care coordination efforts within ACOs can ameliorate gathering evidence-based data by prioritizing data sharing and interoperability.
The exchange of patient health information leads to a more comprehensive and cohesive dataset (Fraze et al., 2020). Additionally, ACOs adopt population health management strategies and care coordination in this model, which can improve piling data by emphasizing preventive care and leveraging data analytics to identify trends and patterns for intervention. When the care coordination within ACOs focuses on outcome measures, cost-effectiveness, and patient satisfaction, evidence-based data is collected easily, as these factors also align with the principles of value-based care (Fraze et al., 2020).
NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis
ACOs often implement patient risk stratification by identifying high-risk patients who can benefit from targeted interventions. Care coordination can enhance the gathering of evidence-based data by tailoring care plans based on individual patient risk profiles, leading to more effective and personalized healthcare (Coran et al., 2021). Furthermore, leveraging the Health Information Exchange utilized by ACOs can improve care coordination efforts to gather evidence-based data.
HIE facilitates the secure sharing of patient information across different healthcare entities and ensures relevant patient health data is accessible to all healthcare providers in the care continuum (Kharrazi et al., 2023). The logical implications of implementing ACOs as a healthcare model for care coordination will be integrated data sharing, promoting a proactive approach to improve health outcomes, patient-centered care, and reduced redundancies with adequate sharing of patient health information among all providers (Kharrazi et al., 2023).
Analyzing current costs and anticipating savings through integrating cost-saving elements is imperative for healthcare organizations to improve the organization’s financial health and patient health. The spreadsheet developed for cost-saving analysis includes four elements: care transition, preventive care programs, telehealth services, and EHR optimization. Care coordination can generate cost savings and reduce expenditures through preventive care plans, efficient care transitions, better management of chronic diseases, and seamless communication using optimized EHRs.
Consequently, healthcare outcomes and health consumerism are enhanced. Care coordination within ACOs helps better data collection through an integrated data-sharing strategy, emphasizing prevention and early intervention care, patient risk stratification, value-based care, and using HIE to increase the accessibility of patient health data among healthcare providers.
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