Building an Effective and High-Quality Practice Model

Teresa Pearson, MS, RN, CDE, Innovative Health Care Designs, LLC, uses her experience as a diabetes educator to discuss how community care teams can build an effective virtual healthcare delivery system. In particular, Ms Pearson describes the practices at Southern Prairie Community Care in Minnesota. The health group pays special focus to healthcare innovation with an emphasis on health IT and care coordination. She says Southern Prairie functions much like an accountable care organization, with 12 counties participating in its initiatives.

“Southern Prairie is in a shared savings model with the state of Minnesota. With the savings that we gain, we are going to share that with the providers that are in the community, and there's a calculation for how that occurs,” says Ms Pearson.

Southern Prairie’s effective coordination has allowed them to reach out to many patients in the community. She uses the story of patient named “Bill” to illustrate how the group is able to coordinate a patient’s care.

Future goals for the group include connecting with Medicare beneficiaries, as well as reducing frequent hospitalizations and emergency department visits.