Our clinical care consultants help your organization transform care.
HMA’s clinical care consultants help your organization transform clinical care at so many levels. They excel in analyzing and streamlining processes; implementing and utilizing data, technology, and clinical informatics; creating staffing solutions; improving payment system and finances and more. So they know that understanding and addressing the needs of people delivering care is critical to successful transformation.
No one knows those needs better than our clinical services staff, which includes a distinguished array of physicians, nurses, advanced practice providers including physician assistants and nurse practitioners, behavioral health therapists and other clinicians. They have all practiced direct patient care, and many continue to do so while also working for HMA as clinical care consultants. Their hands-on experience will help your organization optimize clinical care and ensure that those who provide it have the support they need.
Meet some of our clinical services experts.
In addition to practicing patient care, our clinical care consultants have gained vast experience in former roles as health system executives, health plan medical directors, correctional health experts, directors of academic departments and training programs, directors of safety net clinics and behavioral health centers, and state health and Medicaid clinical chiefs.
Big or small, urban or rural: HMA can improve clinical care anywhere.
With extensive direct clinical experience, our team knows the ins and outs of delivery systems. We can help clients improve and excel in multiple settings and programs: inpatient and outpatient facilities, behavioral health and SUD programs, and medical, nursing and health systems of all sizes. Our multi-disciplinary teams can address clients’ needs no matter the size or scope of the work, in rural or urban areas, and with private or public funding and programming.
Transforming healthcare through clinical consulting services
Our HMA clinical care consultants work in multidisciplinary teams assembled specifically for each project. They understand and access the most current advancements and digital solutions to optimize care. Through these teams, HMA provides a wide array of clinical consulting services:
- Transformation of clinical care: Helping your organization align payment and incentives and use evidence-based approaches to delivering care that will support value-based healthcare and outcomes.
- Digital health strategy: Designing, implementing, and optimizing technology solutions like electronic health records, PHM platforms and telehealth. HMA will help you make data driven decisions to direct resources and transform care.
- Coaching and technical assistance: Providing in-person or virtual assistance to support staff implementing or improving services.
- Application of clinical expertise: Using clinical expertise to inform health services research design, policy analysis, and corporate strategy.
- Assistance with emerging clinical developments: Fostering healthcare transformation with the latest methods and research.
- Leadership development: Coaching and support to build leadership skills and capacities for important roles in your organization.
- Recruitment and training: Helping you establish a capable, competent and culturally sensitive workforce.
- Interim Services: Filling key leadership positions in your organization on a temporary basis
Clinical Services Project Examples
Here are just a few of the clients we’ve assisted with clinical services.
The client: District of Columbia, Dept of Health Care Finance
Overview:
HMA clinicians are providing coaching to Medicaid providers across the District of Columbia as part of the Integrated Care Technical Assistance Program. The District of Columbia’s Department of Health Care Finance (DHCF) engaged HMA to lead this multi-year training and coaching project. The five-year project supports Medicaid providers’ efforts to deliver whole person care by integrating physical and behavioral health in order to better manage the complex needs of Medicaid beneficiaries. The technical assistance will help providers understand and implement clinical approaches and business processes that align with the District’s continued move to fully integrated managed care.
Approach:
HMA’s multi-disciplinary team of coaches include physicians (internal medicine, family practice and psychiatry), nurses, behavioral health professionals (psychologists and social workers) along with quality improvement and evaluation experts. The HMA team provides group learning sessions such as webinars and workshops as well as 1:1 individualized coaching with the provider teams. The individual and group technical assistance follows a curriculum designed for the three core competencies of the Integrated Care DC project.
Impact and outcomes:
Progress will be measured by completion of a pre, interim and post assessment for each participating practice. The assessment tool measures the practices’ progress toward implementing processes to meet the three core competencies defined in the program: delivering person- centered care across the care continuum; using population health analytics to address complex medical, behavioral health and social needs; and engaging leadership to support value based care. Additional separate assessments will measure readiness and maturity for the use of telehealth and for programs offering Medications for Addiction Treatment (MAT).
Here’s a link to the project. IntegratedCareDC.com.
Dr. Jean Glossa serves as the Project Director.
Background:
Poor birth outcomes, especially for communities of color, are a persistent health issue for our country. While there is no “cure” for preterm birth, the leading contributor to poor birth outcomes, group prenatal care is an evidence-based practice to reduce pre-term birth, especially for urban African American communities.
Group prenatal care provides a host of other benefits including improved breastfeeding rates, enhanced parental knowledge, and better pregnancy spacing. In addition, decreasing preterm birth provides tremendous cost savings.
The Centering Health Institute (CHI) has developed a successful model of group prenatal care called CenteringPregnancy™. CenteringPregnancy empowers patients, strengthens patient-provider relationships, and builds communities through three main components of health assessment, community building, and interactive learning delivered as a series of group visits with pregnant individuals at similar gestational age.
While more prenatal providers are offering Centering as a model of care, not every pregnant individual has access to this model. Maternity care in rural America is facing a crisis in access, and the COVID-19 pandemic required organizations to shift to care delivered through telehealth.
The Approach:
CHI engaged HMA to assist in responding to acute operational concerns for practices forced to abruptly implement telehealth during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Margaret Kirkegaard, a family physician who provides prenatal care in clinical practice and is experienced in telehealth implementation projects, helped the CHI team respond to the needs of communities and families by expanding access to CenteringPregnancy group prenatal care through telehealth.
Based on that experience, CHI and HMA worked to develop a virtual model for CenteringPregnancy group prenatal care based on the existing evidence for telehealth prenatal care and the experience of current Centering providers.
The Results:
The team developed a CenteringPregnancy Virtual Playbook with multiple provider and patient tools that help Centering sites establish a clinically appropriate cadence of telehealth and in-person visits, perform self-assessment via telehealth (e.g. home blood pressure monitoring), and manage group interactions through a telehealth platform. This work has the power to support families and providers and expand access to this critically necessary model of care.
The Client: Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS), St. Nicholas Hospital, Sheboygan, Wisconsin
Background:
The prevalence of opioid use disorder (OUD) and the resultant harms from this disorder continue to escalate in the United States. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics released a report noting that in 2020, drug overdose deaths in the United States increased by nearly 30% over the previous year, reaching an all-time high of more than 100,000. The majority of these deaths are attributable to opioids.
The Challenge:
Many individuals with OUD are seen in the emergency department (ED) due to overdose attempts, OUD related conditions like skin infections, or other medical issues where they acknowledge
opioid use. However, most EDs are not prepared to initiate lifesaving, evidence-based treatment for OUD in the form of Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT). HSHS, St. Nicholas Hospital, honoring their Franciscan tradition to provide holistic care with special attention to the most vulnerable individuals, committed to tackling the OUD issue head on.
The Approach:
With help from a team of HMA clinicians including a primary care physician, an addictionologist, emergency medicine clinicians, and a social worker, HSHS St. Nicholas Hospital applied for a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. The grant funds were used to strengthen their processes to initiate MAT in the ED, connect individuals with OUD with peer recovery specialists directly in the ED, and develop timely referrals for outpatient continuation of MAT.
The HMA team of Margaret Kirkegaard, MD, Shannon Robinson, MD, Scott Haga, PAC, Shelly Virva, LCSW, and Corey Waller, MD performed an initial assessment of ED processes for HSHS St. Nicholas Hospital, facilitated development of electronic medical record (EMR) tools for OUD order sets and referrals, and helped the hospital identify and tackle barriers to more robust MAT prescribing.
HMA also prepared and delivered a series of OUD educational modules that were tailored to individual clinical disciplines including didactic webinars and short, educational videos designed to fit the reality of a busy ED during a global pandemic.
The Results:
HSHS St. Nicholas Hospital, with HMA’s continued assistance, is currently working on strengthening their OUD clinical processes and expanding MAT initiation in the ED to other HSHS hospitals and neighboring hospital systems.
Learn More About The Project: www.stnicholashospital.org/opioid
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