Regional Cancer Care Associates, Olney, Maryland
Regional Cancer Care Associates, based in New Jersey, has more than 20 locations throughout New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania and the Washington area. Staff realized they needed a risk-stratified list of patients for COVID-19 vulnerability that nurses could manage through phone calls and by coordinating services with other providers.
THE PROBLEM
Because of staffing challenges, the list had to identify only the high-risk patients who staff needed to manage first, not the entire population or those patients who could wait a bit longer for nurse outreach. Even though we already had an indigenous and independent scoring logic/mechanism for patient risk, this was mainly based on a combination of comorbidities that differentiated it from the usual scoring techniques, explained Lani M. Alison, vice president of quality and value transformation at RCCA.