Small, Independent Medical Group Outpaces Goliath with Data-Driven Care

Boise, ID, March 30, 2015 (Newswire.com) - As large hospitals and health systems gobble up smaller medical practices, executives assert that the technology investments required by the transition to a fee-for-value healthcare system can only be realized by giant institutions that bring economies of scale. A physician and employee owned medical group in Boise, Idaho is defying the “bigger is better” conventional wisdom and using sophisticated technology solutions and predictive data analytics to achieve better patient outcomes and greater efficiencies.

“What we’re doing here is certainly unique and counter to the trends we see throughout the country,” said David Peterman, M.D., President of Primary Health Medical Group. “With our 14 sites in the Boise area, our smaller size has allowed us to undergo dramatic transformations so we can measure outcomes and improve patient satisfaction. We have a homegrown network of clinics that’s delivering integrated, efficient and effective care, with impressive outcomes that insurance carriers have affirmed are truly working.”

In healthcare, 90% of the data doesn't get used or is applied in ways that don't add value to the system. There's low hanging fruit that we can work on together, so that we can leverage the massive amounts of data and put actionable insights into the hands of providers. With these insights, providers can direct and prescribe high-impact, low-cost interventions that result in better outcomes and fewer hospitalizations.

Michael Hollenbeck, CEO and Managing Director

After looking around at various data analytics solutions that would enhance their decision-making, Primary Health Medical Group teamed up with Proskriptive, whose value proposition is to help healthcare organizations identify and capitalize on opportunities that improve population care. Proskriptive’s solutions distill powerful insights and boost accountability by marrying claims data and clinical data. Most analytics solutions, including very expensive applications that can be unwieldy in their deployment, only look in the rear-view mirror at old claims data, limiting their ability to provide actionable insights and risk modeling.

Peterman and Proskriptive founder Michael Hollenbeck consider themselves to be uniquely simpatico—fellow pioneers in a rapidly changing healthcare world where consolidation and enormous organizations are increasingly the norm. A pediatrician by training (and still practicing today), Peterman received nearly a decade of mentoring by venture capitalists and former Fortune 500 executives while working for a previous iteration of PHMG. “The VCs were demanding—smart people always asking very good and tough questions,” recalls Peterman. “The experience is unique for a pediatrician and taught me a lot about the business of healthcare.” Since 2005, Peterman has led the organization through rapid expansion to the current 14 clinics and 64 providers. The group weathered the great recession without a single layoff, and now sees more than 300,000 patient visits per year.

Hollenbeck launched Proskriptive in 2014 with an impressive pedigree in data analytics. He began his career at ProClarity, a Boise based start-up that was eventually purchased by Microsoft. He stayed on at Microsoft as a Business Intelligence Specialist for two and half years before transitioning to data analytics, working as a sales executive at WhiteCloud Analytics and then as VP of Healthcare at Predixion. In those experiences, Hollenbeck was often serving some of the biggest healthcare institutions, but realized that at a more grassroots level, analytical tools were often lacking and he envisioned putting such tools in the hands of practitioners.

Peterman and Primary Health Medical Group appeared to be an excellent fit for Proskriptive, given the company’s early foray into electronic health records (EHR), their obsessive commitment to measuring outcomes, quality of care, using evidence-based medicine, and their relentless pursuit of both efficiency and patient satisfaction.

Together, Peterman and Hollenbeck see enormous opportunities to expand on Primary Health Medical Group’s successes with population management. They are currently piloting the use of Proskriptive’s predictive analytics on a population of approximately 8000 Medicaid patients. With the federal government moving quickly and aggressively toward value-based reimbursements, providers serving Medicaid patients will need to get a better handle on populational health and risk modeling, turning to tools like Proskriptive’s.

“In healthcare, 90% of the data doesn’t get used or is applied in ways that don’t add value to the system,” said Hollenbeck. “There’s low hanging fruit that we can work on together, so that we can leverage the massive amounts of data and put actionable insights into the hands of providers. With these insights, providers can direct and prescribe high-impact, low-cost interventions that result in better outcomes and fewer hospitalizations.”

About Primary Health Medical Group

Boise-based Primary Health Medical Group is a predominately primary care medical group with 14 clinics and 62 providers seeing more than 300,000 patient visits a year. Most clinics offer walk-in urgent care and appointment-based family medicine, so unlike the traditional model, providers can work together to address episodic and chronic care needs. The group also has physicians in pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, dermatology, occupational medicine, and ear, nose, and throat. Learn more at www.primaryhealth.com.

About Proskriptive

Proskriptive is a Boise-based company offering providers and payers better population care, improved patient outcomes and more efficient management of healthcare resources through a dynamic analytics platform, expert services, and flexible tools to guide data-driven decision making. Learn more at www.proskriptive.com.