Views and Voices

Dale Glenn, M.D.

Chief of Family Medicine and Medical Director, Information Systems,
Straub Clinic & Hospital

As a doctor in family medicine, many of the patients I see in my Kailua office have chronic diseases that are preventable or can be effectively managed if they are treated early or a little more proactively with lifestyle changes. My goal is to keep people out of the hospital and off medication as much as possible. To do that, we need to really focus on prevention.

Hawai‘i Pacific Health’s HealthAdvantage program is about prevention. It’s about putting you in control of your own health care. Using Epic, our systemwide electronic medical record (EMR), we’ve implemented best-practice alerts shared by all doctors at our four hospitals and 44 outpatient clinics and service sites.

We have 1.8 million patient records in our EMR that connects all of the patients and health care providers in our health system, which includes Kapi‘olani, Pali Momi, Straub and Wilcox Health. This allows every doctor in our system to see the same information on any patient.

We put preventive-health alerts in every patient’s chart to remind us what tests or procedures that patient may be due for, right at the point of care, so the physician and patient can talk about what they need. We do outreach using our database of medical records and look for patients who haven’t come in or who are overdue for certain tests. We have nurse educators and outreach workers who will contact the patients and help schedule the necessary exams, bring them in for a blood test, or provide education if needed.

We are actively working with HMSA’s HealthPass and other health care providers in our community, so we don’t spend money duplicating resources. We want to use existing resources, not re-invent the wheel. As much as possible, we’re cooperating with other organizations to educate and empower our patients to make positive health changes in their lives.

HMSA has been very supportive of Hawai‘i Pacific Health’s HealthAdvantage program in conjunction with their Patient-Centered Medical Home approach. It’s definitely a collaborative, win-win situation for the patient, HMSA and our organization. We improve the quality of care and do it in a cost-effective way that allows patients to be actively involved in their own care.

All of this focus on prevention and quality is coordinated through a primary care physician selected by the patient. That primary care physician remains in communication with every other member of the patient’s care team within Hawai‘i Pacific Health, so this patient-centered program always brings it back to that core relationship.

Physicians who are participating in HealthAdvantage really like it. They like getting the extra services that help get their patients screened. They like having assistance in getting education to their patients with diabetes. Many of them really like communicating with their patients through our online portal, MyHealthAdvantage, and maintaining that relationship outside the doctor’s office. It allows us to address simple issues without necessarily bringing the patient into the office.

Though the program has been going for less than a year, we’ve already seen an improvement in patient quality scores that we measure for our patients with diabetes.

We all want to see patients get the very best care possible, and we want to see patients heal. That’s what we love to do as physicians, and I know that’s what HMSA is interested in for the good of their members.