Empowered Patient Podcast Proactive Management of Chronic GI Conditions with Beth Houck SonarMD
Beth Houck, Chief Executive Officer at SonarMD, works with payers and physician practices to provide proactive, value-based care for patients with chronic GI conditions. They use a digital platform to monitor self-reported patient symptoms and enable physicians to identify those patients that need attention. This approach aims to improve patient outcomes and reduce emergency room visits and hospitalizations.
Beth explains, "SonarMD manages patients with chronic gut health conditions, and specifically, we started with something called inflammatory bowel disease, which is the encompassing word for patients with Crohn's and ulcerative colitis. We develop a value-based contract with a payer, so somebody at risk for the cost of care of a patient, and then we bring that cost of care program to a physician's office. In collaboration with that physician, we manage a population of patients to have better outcomes for their chronic GI conditions."
"We just talk about this as a shift to proactive care from reactive care. So rather than the loudest patients being seen, we will have patients that we surface as the most important patients for them to see. So we reach out to our patients and do it very lightly with a text message or email. We tell them a little bit about the program. We talk to them about how we're doing this on behalf of their physician practice and in collaboration with them. So this isn't something that's being forced on you by a payer. We ping those patients, which is the term we use on a regular basis, to collect their reported outcomes or the symptoms they're having with their disease."
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