Jay Mason

Baptist Hospital recently joined the 60 U.S. hospitals utilizing MyHealthDIRECT —a web-based platform that first builds, then organizes, open and available appointments throughout an entire provider network into a searchable and schedulable inventory of healthcare services.

Serving the Underserved

Wisconsin-based MyHealthDIRECT is saving money and impacting quality measures for participating hospitals, according to Jay Mason, founder and chief executive officer for the company. More importantly, his team is connecting the uninsured and underinsured populations and Medicaid patients, who often frequent emergency departments, to primary care providers.

“It’s a win-win situation,” said Mason. “Everyone’s goal is to get the patient to the right provider at the right time.”

The concept is simple: A patient shows up in a hospital’s emergency department, or receives treatment as an inpatient. The admissions registrar notes the patient has no primary care provider, and searches the MyHealthDIRECT database for physicians and available appointments. The field can be narrowed based on a doctor’s availability, location, spoken language, gender or religion, ensuring a good match regardless of the patient’s preferences and transportation or insurance needs.

Within five minutes, the patient has an appointment and is more likely to receive follow-up and preventive care on an ongoing basis. The web-based application means no software is purchased or displaced, and clients appreciate affordable monthly subscriptions over pricey software purchases. MyHealthDIRECT also provides onsite one-on-one training for hospital and clinic staff.

“The whole preface is to get patients who frequent the emergency department a provider for follow-up so there’s better continuity of care,” said Jennifer Elliott, director of Emergency Services, Critical Care and Patient Access at Baptist Hospital. “It’s difficult to treat a chronic problem if patients are using the Emergency Department as their primary source of care, and we want to help point them in the right direction.”

Baptist Hospital’s ED receives more than 50,000 patient visits each year, and treats each patient regardless of ability to pay. The hospital received a $37,500 grant from the Baptist Healing Trust to help implement MyHealthDIRECT.

Elliott said the system is a welcome upgrade from traditional referral methods, which involve giving patients a list of doctors accepting new patients, or making them wait up to 20 minutes while the registrar attempts to schedule an appointment by phone.

Physician Participation

MyHealthDIRECT staff work with hospitals to recruit physicians, who have the ability to control appointment details through the system.

“MyHealthDIRECT isn’t just technology sitting on a server somewhere,” Mason noted. “We actually deploy employees who go into the community and help doctors understand what the program is all about. We’re digitalizing the appointments and partnerships they already have in place.”

And by identifying trending and no-show rates at participating clinics, the program also helps backfill open appointments and no-shows.

“A lot of clinics perceive themselves to not be available at the last minute,” Elliott said. “MyHealthDIRECT helps clinics be full … not just look full.”

Nashville Medical Group

Nashville Medical Group (NMG) was among the first Baptist affiliates to participate in MyHealthDIRECT. With four locations and 42 physicians, the primary care-driven, multi-specialty group designates a set number of appointments to the web-based scheduling exchange.

“We want to live out the mission, vision and values of Saint Thomas Health Services, which is providing care to the poor and vulnerable,” said Gregg Winston, administrator for NMG. “It’s a philosophical and moral commitment that follows what we’re all about, which is getting people into a primary care setting so we can deal with them on a holistic basis.”

The MyHealthDIRECT Community

MyHealthDIRECT is gaining in popularity throughout Middle Tennessee’s healthcare community. Web-based scheduling is being adopted by additional hospitals and by 2-1-1 Tennessee — a free community services help line provided through United Way.

Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future

An information technology entrepreneur with 20 years experience in start-ups, Mason launched MyHealthDIRECT in 2005, following the closure of a large central city hospital in his native Milwaukee.

“It created a lot of unintended consequences, and the medical community got together and said they wanted to do something about it,” Mason recalled. “We were already in development of a solution, and re-crafted it slightly to improve access to care for the uninsured and those covered by Medicaid.”

In Milwaukee, Mason’s web-based scheduling reduced non-urgent emergency department visits by about 23 percent — a statistic that’s become standard among participating hospitals. Still, Mason said MyHealthDIRECT is less about getting patients out of the ED and more about getting them into the most appropriate healthcare setting possible. He now provides web-based scheduling to 60 hospitals and 12 health plan clients in a dozen states, and Mason plans to launch a retail version for health plan participants in 2012.

“We built this platform with the future in mind,” Mason concluded. “We want to improve the workflow process for our clients and learn how we can help them function most effectively.”

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