The Importance of Care Coordination for Chronic Disease Management
Aetna executives explain why care coordination is essential to chronic disease management and how Aetna uses value-based care and digital tools to streamline care coordination processes.
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- Care coordination is essential for patients with chronic diseases whose treatment plans require provider input from multiple specialties.
Treatment for diabetes—one of the most expensive chronic diseases in the US—may incorporate care from over ten kinds of healthcare professionals. If these providers have poor communication, they can make a patient’s diabetes treatment plan even more complicated, Julie Bietsch, senior vice president of clinical operations at Aetna, explained to Healthcare Strategies.
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“People need help accessing and coordinating all the information provided to them,” Bietsch said. “The key is you have to make the solution more personalized, resolve the barriers a person faces, and connect care with the solution people can implement.”
Care coordination in these complex environments requires digital tools. Bietsch noted that personalizing messages and automating processes can help improve communication and efficiency. Digital tools can also help caregivers stay engaged in chronic disease treatment.
But healthcare professionals cannot rely solely on virtual and digital resources to effectively communicate and collaborate.
Chronic disease care coordination requires partnership between payers and providers. It brings healthcare and health insurance professionals back to the fundamentals like addressing social determinants of health and improving data transfers. To Eric Fennel, vice president of network strategy and value-based solutions at Aetna, chronic disease care coordination also demands that payers offer extra support in their value-based contracts.
“We truly view the relationship with the provider as a partnership where we're not just sharing risk, for example, as in a value-based contract, but we're taking the responsibility as a partner to leverage our capabilities, including technology, data, hands-on support, and other assets to really help our provider partners be successful in delivering better outcomes,” Fennel said on Healthcare Strategies.
While the extra support is crucial to reinforcing partnerships, the traditional facets of value-based care agreements are also well-suited for chronic disease care coordination. The financial structure of these agreements incentivizes streamlined, high-quality care.
“Many of the value-based payment models that we use to support our providers enable them to invest in care coordination programs and services themselves, in addition to leveraging the types of programs and services that we have. They also help us shift the measure of success towards long-term goals by realigning those incentives,” Fennel said.
