Patient Trust, Provider Partnership, Care Coordination
Clinical care gaps are the discrepancies between accepted guideline recommendations and the care patients receive. At Bridgewell Medical, we believe building patient trust is key to closing these gaps, improving the health of our patients, and helping health plans achieve their quality improvement goals.
Closing these gaps begins by building rapport with patients and providers. Our clinical pharmacists live in the communities they serve and work to develop relationships with local providers, even embedding them in medical practices when possible. We listen to our patients to understand their health concerns, use motivational interviewing techniques, provide extensive medication and disease-state education, offer recommendations, answer questions, and provide care coordination services. Bridgewell’s unique business model allows patients to interact from the comfort of their own homes. This face-to-face interaction goes beyond building trust and promoting open communication - it also facilitates the evaluation of relevant social determinants of health that may be interfering with a patient’s ability to attain optimal health.
We also collaborate with health plans, physicians, and social services organizations to remove potential barriers to care. Our medical team is composed of dedicated pharmacists, patient care advocates, and care coordinators who take the extra time needed to ensure our patients and their families understand their medications and their insurance benefits, preventative care measures, and recommended treatments. We believe that providing patients with accurate information empowers them to make informed decisions and become active participants in their own care, ultimately improving health outcomes while minimizing costs whenever possible.
On the provider front, we work to reduce clinical fragmentation by sharing information with our patient’s primary care provider, specialists, and dispensing pharmacies. Coordinating the dissemination of information ensures that everyone is working together with the most recent and complete information. Facilitating collaborative care, rather than enabling fragmentation, reduces therapeutic conflicts and redundancies, eliminates errors, and expedites clinical gap closure.
Continuity of care is another crucial factor in how Bridgewell closes clinical care gaps. Our local medication management teams establish longitudinal relationships with each of their patients. Treating our patients as more than a number and building long-lasting relationships with them enables a better understanding of their overall health and allows us to monitor for changes over time to identify potential issues before they become problems. In addition, partnering with the providers in our communities helps us to improve prescriber follow-through and gain care management efficiencies. Working together, we can close care gaps and improve patient health while reducing avoidable and costly healthcare utilization.
Let’s talk about how we can enhance patient care and improve outcomes for the population you serve.
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