Care management program success depends on keeping patients actively enrolled in the program until they achieve their health and wellness goals, their health risk decreases, and they can confidently self-manage their chronic conditions. When this happens, they can graduate from the program and return to traditional disease management.
However, when patients drop out of the care management program prematurely, it increases their risk. It undermines the provider’s objectives of improved clinical outcomes, well-managed patient populations, and corresponding revenue.
Patient retention is as much about what you do as it is how you do it. Most importantly, patients stay enrolled when the value that they receive meets their goals and priorities.
Through powerful processes, evidence-based tools, and analytics – the “what” – and mindful patient-centered approaches – the “how” – care management teams can retain more patients and maintain a healthy roster of program participants.
Why patient retention is vital to care management success
Providers, payors, and value-based partnerships can’t reap the rewards of care management if their patient churn rate is high. It is time- and cost-intensive to identify, enroll, and engage patients in a care management program only to leave the physician’s care.
Building a care management program provides many benefits to patients and the practice. Scaling that program through revenue, staffing, and technology is crucial to success, which is built on patient retention.
What does it take to keep patients enrolled in a care management program?
Let’s look at the “what,” the “how,” and the real reason patients stay engaged: their “why.”
Take a patient-centered approach to care management retention
Many care management programs focus on patient compliance, but care plan adherence is a byproduct, not the goal. Ultimately, your objective is to build rapport with the patient, uncover their personal priorities and health goals, and support their progress toward those meaningful goals.
What you do in support of the patient is a critical part of an effective care management program, including:
- Evidence-based assessments
- Motivational interviewing
- Establishing SMART goals
- Creating a care plan
- Providing education and resource referrals
- Reaching out for regular touchpoints
However, it’s only one part of the patient retention equation.
The other is how you use a mindful, patient-centered approach to create a collaborative partnership where patients:
- Trust their care manager
- Feel understood and respected
- Actively participate in care plan activities
- Believe the program is helping them improve their lives
Optimize engagement throughout the patient retention cycle
Patient retention is not a one-and-done activity. Patient engagement and continual enrollment indicate that a patient finds ongoing value in the program and your support.
Figure 1 highlights the major steps in a patient’s care management journey. Each junction in the cycle presents an opportunity to build greater rapport, collaboration, and deliver value or disengage.
Building patient rapport has been shown to improve patient adherence to their care plan, clinical outcomes, and patient satisfaction. Research has also shown that patients who were aware of their care manager reported more helpful interactions, with 81.3% experiencing at least one interaction that was “very helpful.”
The longer patients were in the care management program, the more value they received and reported.
How ThoroughCare helps care management programs retain more patients
There are three primary ways that ThoroughCare helps your care management program retain enrolled participants.
The “what”: Delivering personalized, high-value care management
First, we provide a cloud-based care coordination platform that supports any care management program, particularly Principal and Chronic Care Management, Transitions of Care, and Behavioral Health Integration.
The platform is built on evidence-based assessments, workflows, care standards, and Medicare care management reimbursement rules.
Our features and functionality equip the care team with everything they need to run an effective, efficient, and compliant care management program. In addition to each available care management module, ThoroughCare provides modules for Annual Wellness Visits, Advance Care Planning, and social determinants of health assessments.
Each of these components makes every care management program more robust and complete.
The “how”: Providing mindful, patient-centric care management
Second, ThoroughCare takes the guesswork out of which patient to prioritize, what tasks to perform, how to organize the workday, and which tools to use when.
Through focused worklists, dashboards, alerts, and easy time and data logging, care managers can focus on building rapport and engaging patients more deeply rather than spend time on organizing and tracking.
Integrated evidence-based multimedia education not only educates patients but also empowers care managers to support patients in meaningful ways.
Guided assessments and motivational interviewing prompts make it easy to focus on the patient and discover their personal priorities rather than think about checklists.
Analytics: Knowing if you’re on the right track
Third, our platform is an analytics powerhouse.
Dashboards and data visualizations serve up your most important metrics, and reports on patient retention, activity, and engagement provide insights into program performance.
ThoroughCare offers insightful patient retention metrics via reports and dashboards
The following key performance indicators from select dashboards and reports provide insights specifically related to retaining enrolled patients.
Analytics dashboard metrics:
- Active patients per program
- Total time logged per month
- Care plan resolutions
Notifications worklist report metrics:
- Total patient notifications created and read
Patient engagement dashboard metrics:
- Active patients
- Inactive patients
- Changes in activity status month-to-month
Patient outreach dashboard metrics:
- Detailed view of call scheduling trends
- Track call outcomes
- Time since last successful call
- Call outcome by time of day
Inactive patients dashboard metrics:
- Patient attrition
- Reasons for inactivity
- Monitor patient engagement trends
- Assess the impact of outreach efforts
Enrollment history metrics:
- Enrollment trends, changes, and patterns
- Track program retention
Chronic Care Management dashboard metrics:
- Monthly comparison of new enrollments and inactivated patients
- Average case length
- Average time between enrollment and inactive status
Maximize care management patient retention
ThoroughCare provides evidence-based workflows, education, assessments, and care plan tools that take the guesswork out of care management. With this foundation, care managers have the confidence to focus on engagement, helping patients tap into their motivation, create goals, and establish new health habits.
