Clarity Health Services Blog

Scott Kronlund, MD.
A Family Doc with a passion for community-based medicine.

Physicians in independent practices are nothing if not “independent.” Even when they are members of a group practice, they value their ability to practice medicine the way they know best, rather than practicing it for some productivity numbers in a big institution.

With wisdom gained through 25 years of clinical and medical management experience, Dr. Scott Kronlund understands this side of physicians in private practice, but also believe deeply that together, led by their sense of what is right to do for their patients, the community of independent doctors is a better place to practice medicine – and a better place to receive medical care.

Scott is the Chief Medical Office of Northwest Physicians Network (NPN), a group of 475 independent physicians. NPN is the sponsor for first community using  Clarity’s Referral Management Service. Scott is passionate about being out in the community with his physician colleagues, and working with them to develop the practical, clinically- and economically-sound tools and techniques to deliver world-class, well-coordinated care right where the patients are: Their neighborhoods and shopping centers.

Dr. Kronlund is a board-certified family practice physician, consultant, educator, former hospital executive, and world-traveler. With NPN, he combines passion and expertise in health care quality improvement with his commitment to community-based and physician-lead health care to help build and sustain a thriving medical community in Pierce County, Washington.

Scott will contribute regularly to this blog, using his experiences in the community to describe what is happening as an independent physicians group becomes increasingly inter-dependent in delivering coordinated, high-quality community-based health care.

The Puget Sound Business Journal profiles Clarity in its latest edition, an article contributed by Peter Neurath, a highly respected journalist who has coverage of the health care industry for many years. Here are the first couple of sentences:

Doctors face much the same problems as other small businesses, including steep administrative expenses.

That burden is a market opportunity for a new Seattle tech company, Clarity Health Services Inc., that aims to help doctors whack those costs.

Peter invested a lot of time interviewing physicians, partners and investors, and his report nicely summarizes Clarity’s business. You can read the entire article here.

We love hearing how Clarity has made a difference in our customers’ practices.

Not so long ago, one of our earliest customers
called us to tell us she got something she had never before received in over 25 years as a nurse, referral coordinator, and care manager –  a “thank you” from the office that got her order.  This came a couple days after the first NPN specialists started using Clarity. Our protagonist sent a routine order to this specialty clinic, and shortly thereafter received a note back through the service saying “Thank you for the order” and signed by the intake coordinator on the other end. It seems like such a small thing, but it was the first time in her long career it had happened.

We are humbled to play some small role in building stronger community where its roots already exist.

I hate to admit it, but more than a decade of health care analysts’ conferences, hundreds of business plan pitches and more expo-floor headaches than I can count, have left me jaded towards the promise of health care information technology.

On a fairly regular cycle, HCIT is trotted out as a panacea for all that ails our health care system. However, this has more often served to benefit the prospects of a political candidate or an IPO, while not actually improving care or lowering cost. The enthusiasm around new technologies (or new buzz words) often obscures the unique difficulties in health care of driving workflow changes, overcoming legacy technology investments and just paying for new systems.

This has left health care languishing more than a decade behind the applications of IT in other data-intensive industries – with an increasingly costly and difficult set of problems to solve.

At Clarity we have a different way to solve some of the system’s chronic administrative and clinical challenges. While Clarity’s referral management service is entirely consistent with the government’s goals for HCIT and electronic medical records (EMR), we believe our service model has numerous advantages over traditional approaches:

• Clarity is a Service, not a Technology: Unlike other companies trying to tackle these challenges, we back up our solution with people – dedicated to processing complex transactions with health plans, tracking down needed information and ensuring that communication between the practices is complete.
• Integration with Existing Workflow: Clarity’s service integrates with existing physician practice workflow. This makes for low-cost (and quick) implementation – and high rates of adoption.
• Low Cost of Use: Clarity doesn’t require the sizable upfront investments of traditional EMR systems.
• Immediate Interoperability: Physicians on our service are able to interact and share information with any other provider – whether they are Clarity subscribers or not.
• Building a Community Health Record: All the clinical information sent through our service is scanned, indexed and populated to the Community Health Record and made available to other providers through Clarity’s service.

Without forcing a change in behavior, Clarity is capturing and making available valuable patient information. We feel that our approach to building the CHR is complementary to the EMR strategies of many provider organizations.

EMRs have an important role inside a health care provider’s organization or practice. Clarity’s service bridges the gaps left between these organizations – efficiently organizing disparate health data, associating it with the individual patient file and serving it up to the community. Clarity’s platform enables robust efforts to coordinate care, manage diseases and improve care quality across the communities we serve.

So, while Clarity is not traditional HCIT, we do move our clients and their clinical communities towards similar goals – the promised-land of interoperability, efficient communications, fewer administrative hassles, etc.

After years of disappointing results from the traditional approach, we are excited to take a road less travelled – and to use this blog to keep you posted on our success along the way.

It may not be brain surgery, but referrals paperwork is a pain, a costly expense requiring staff time that could be better spent with patients.

So the brain surgeons at South Sound Neurosurgery didn’t think twice when the practice’s chief executive officer – Hiroshi Nakano — recommended the practice outsourcing its paperwork to Clarity Health Services.

“Everyone loved Clarity’s service as soon as we started using it – for a couple of reasons,” Hiroshi said.  “First, the service takes our staff off the phones, where they spent so much time playing phone tag, sitting on hold, then wondering if they were really being heard.  That was frustrating work.

“Second, when we pass off paperwork to Clarity, we know it gets done, and done right,” Hiroshi said.  “Confirming insurance eligibility and obtaining authorizations.  Making certain that other specialists receive all information accurately, and handling exceptions and special cases.  Clarity does it all, including promoting an easier way for physicians to communicate with other physicians.

Now, South Sound Neurosurgery would have a hard time going back to its old administrative system.

“We’d have a revolt,” Hiroshi said.  “Now everyone here is doing more of what they trained to do – work with patients, not insurance companies.”

How a simple gesture saves time, reduces communication hassles, and improves patient care

We’ve spent countless hours talking with physicians’ office staff on both the sending and receiving end of referrals. A regular theme we hear from the referring office is that the most important thing to them is knowing that their patient is scheduled for the consultation or procedure they have ordered. With the old way of doing referrals – phone and fax – the referring office has to track down somebody at the other practice to get this basic information.

The flip side is that specialist staff often tell us that they have a really hard time getting in touch with the staff at the referring office to tell them the status of their order and the plans for their patients.

It’s the same problem, and it’s a pain for both parties.

When both referring and receiving practices are online with Clarity, this problem disappears with a very simple act of acknowledgment on the part of the receiving practice. When they see an order in their Clarity worklist, they simply acknowledge it and add an appointment date, if scheduled. Clarity provides a simple way for the two offices to exchange schedule, status and patient information. And it doesn’t matter what EMRs or practice management systems the two office have – or even that they have an electronic system at all.

Our offices are just north of “The Market” – Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market. Connecting its bustling, modern downtown with its stunning waterfront, The Market is a Seattle treasure – home to a 102-year-old continuously-operating farmer’s market. From the fish mongers throwing salmon for cheering customers to the original Starbucks coffee shop, The Market is a place like no other. It is a vibrant and eclectic neighborhood with food vendors, artisans, street performers, restaurants, residences and – happily for us – some choice office space.

We feel great about being in The Market. The Market started as a community effort, and has gained a world-wide reputation while maintaining its earthiness and remaining true to its original purpose – connecting people more closely with the things they buy, use and eat.

The Market is a metaphor of sorts for us:  The Market is about communities eating, shopping, living and working together; Our aspiration is to bring the same spirit to physician-lead, community-based health care services.

Photos: iStockPhoto