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Early Intervention for Colorado Health Care & Health Insurance

A New Delivery Model for Early Intervention

Our current health care system is structured around illness rather than wellness. Depersonalization, excessive waiting periods, and costly time away from work are frequent road blocks to accessing the system.

In response to employee dissatisfaction and rising health care costs, Beth-El College of Nursing collaborated last year with El Paso County, Colorado (where we are located) to develop a clinic with a unique model of health care delivery for county employees and their families. Several months later, the City of Colorado Springs signed up its employees.

The model of care is one of "patient empowerment" and education. If patients can learn to understand their own bodies, illnesses, and the interventions that will keep them healthy, then their satisfaction will increase and the cost of their care will decrease. Our clinic has a nurse practitioner structure of care delivery. The nurses staffing it are on our faculty. The medical office assistants are our students. Graduate and undergraduate students provide wellness programs. Our two local hospitals (Memorial and Penrose-St. Francis) provide laboratory, radiology, health promotion, and other services. The nurse practitioners work collaboratively with the patient's physician to promote quality care. An important aspect of the model of care is that it maximizes how we utilize the skills and education of different health care providers in a cost-effective way.

A major success factor for the clinic is that the county and city are "self insured." As a result, cost savings are realized immediately by the employer. Initial data analysis indicates that significant savings result from deferred office visits, deferred emergency room visits, and less time away from work. We expect that health of the employees will also improve due to our health promotion activities. But this will take a longer time frame to actually measure.

Although cost savings were an important goal, the greatest reward for all the project collaborators has been the high level of satisfaction. Patients evaluate their visit on a 1-5 measurement scale and provide written comments. Most evaluate the clinic at a 5 (the highest) level. Comments like "the best health care I have ever received" are not unusual. Patients who couldn't get an appointment with their primary care provider for six weeks were able to walk into the clinic on the same day they had a problem. As the project continues, more data will be available, and we will continue to analyze success factors.

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