Albany Medical Center, PPS needed to meet major milestones for DSRIP funding while investing in system transformation, clinical management and population health management. These challenges required standardization, and communication and coordination across scores of regional healthcare and social service organizations.
The program management office needed help designing a framework to achieve its goals and qualify for payments to support implementation. Leaders of the organization turned to Accenture for experienced resources to design a large-scale model for clinical integration, initially for Medicaid patients yet capable of serving additional population groups in the coming years.
Accenture assembled an interdisciplinary team of health consultants and strategists, complemented with the knowledge of physicians, nurses and information technology specialists. Team members worked with Albany Medical Center, PPS to assess challenges, and six themes emerged:
Weekly meetings, interviews and analysis led to the creation of an overarching model for integration. The framework outlined foundational components, assumptions, guiding principles and enabling technologies. The project team worked closely with members of the Albany Medical Center, PPS technology team so electronic medical records systems and preferred tools would be integrated and supported. Accenture also designed and led training sessions so participants could learn new processes and protocols. The first trained group serves as super-users, championing the model to others.