Enhancing Patient Care and Clinic Efficiency - The Impact of OutcomeMD at NY Ketamine Infusions
Overcoming Treatment Challenges at NY Ketamine Infusions
NY Ketamine Infusions is a multi-location ketamine practice in the United States that provides patients with much-needed relief from chronic pain as well as debilitating mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
What are Ketamine Infusions?
Ketamine infusion therapy is the administration of ketamine, an anesthetic medication, to a patient through an intravenous line. Patients receive infusions under strict medical supervision in a controlled, safe environment.
Intravenous administration enables medical providers to deliver ketamine at a controlled rate and in precise doses. Infusions are administered in scheduled treatment intervals, which can vary based on provider recommendations and patient care needs.
What are the Benefits of Ketamine Infusions?
Ketamine infusions are used to treat chronic pain, certain mood conditions, and treatment-resistant depression. The benefits of ketamine infusions include improved mood, motivation, and functionality.
Ketamine infusions are known for providing relief more rapidly than many traditional medications. Patients report relief from symptoms within hours or days of the first treatment, and relief often lasts long after the treatment schedule has concluded.
For patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression, ketamine infusions offer a promising alternative to traditional depression medication.
Addressing Ketamine Treatment Assessment Challenges
NYKI carries a single goal for all patients who walk through its doors: to help them restore their well-being and feel like themselves again. To meet this goal, it is critical that NYKI can quickly and effortlessly measure the impact that their ketamine infusions have on patients.
However, this was a difficult task! NYKI considered collecting patient-reported outcome data via paper surveys but could foresee multiple challenges, with the biggest barrier being the reliance on the patient to complete the survey and bring it to appointments so that NYKI’s clinicians could review the data and enter it into DrChrono by EverHealth, their preferred EHR platform. Lower survey response rates translate to less patient data to accurately provide an overall view of whether treatments are successful or not.
Identifying Patients Who Are Struggling
NYKI was concerned about how to best identify patients whose initial positive ketamine effects had waned in the time since the conclusion of their treatment sessions. As a patient-centered practice, NYKI’s would have loved to adopt a workflow in which they followed up with every patient via routinely scheduled telephone calls to monitor their health. However, this type of process was both financially and logistically unfeasible.
Measuring Treatment Success Rates to Highlight the NYKI Advantage
From speaking with patients, NYKI knew their therapy was effective and provided meaningful benefits but did not know how to prove it to their patient referral sources. They wanted to generate authentic patient data that could set NYKI apart from other ketamine clinics, and demonstrate the success of their treatments.
Driving Treatment Success: OutcomeMD’s Impact on Patient Monitoring at NY Ketamine Infusions
In 2021, NYKI found its solutions in OutcomeMD, a patient-reported outcome tool that is integrated with NYKI’s EHR platform of choice, DrChrono. At pre-defined scheduled intervals, including at baseline and following treatment sessions, NYKI uses OutcomeMD + DrChrono to send its patients’ outcome surveys specific to their condition via a unique link through text or email. NYKI clinicians monitor the patient responses routinely as well as just before appointments to assess treatment effectiveness and make decisions regarding changes. OutcomeMD’s easy-to-access web-based platform is convenient for patients, and the use of patient reminders helps with survey adherence and ensures that NYKI can feel confident that they have a pulse on the health of their patients.
With OutcomeMD + DrChrono, NYKI continuously tracks patient health beyond their treatment sessions and can rapidly determine who is declining and would benefit from a follow-up appointment, as well as booster infusions to reduce their symptoms and improve quality of life. Creating this patient shortlist would be significantly more challenging and time-consuming without OutcomeMD’s remote patient monitoring platform and ability to track changes in patient results via easy-to-read graphs.
The use of OutcomeMD + DrChrono creates a clear advantage for NYKI when speaking to B2B referral sources. The ability to talk about their patients’ great outcomes and support those claims with patient-generated data and evidence-based treatment success rates offers a key differentiator from other ketamine clinics. NYKI can distinguish itself because they track outcomes and have strong patient adherence to the outcome measure surveys. Additionally, NYKI feels that their use of OutcomeMD + DrChrono to monitor patient progress and treatment response also signals to patients that they are an outcome-focused practice.
Results
- Multi-location Ketamine Practice
- Launched OutcomeMD in 2021
- 6,000 initial surveys sent*
- 34,000 follow up surveys sent*
Since launching OutcomeMD within DrChrono, NYKI has sent over 6,000 initial surveys to patients, and over 34,000 follow-up surveys. For NYKI, OutcomeMD is viewed as an investment in patient care that is well worth its cost. The platform eliminates the need for staff to administer, measure, and monitor these patient surveys, a process that would be costly and challenging. The seamless integration with their EHR platform DrChrono makes OutcomeMD an easy choice.
Add Remote Patient Monitoring to Your Practice
OutcomeMD is an integrated application within DrChrono. That means it’s simple to activate on your DrChrono account and integrate into your patient workflow.
In a few clicks, you can send OutcomeMD assessments directly to your patient’s phone or email. Assessments can also be completed using in-office devices, if you prefer collecting results during appointments. On average, it takes patients just four minutes to complete.
Assessment data is automatically synced into the DrChono patient notes, ensuring your providers always have up-to-date records. OutcomeMD also features a practice dashboard, where your patients’ data is collected. Here, providers gain a holistic view of care results in the practice and notifications of patients who require attention.
Learn more about how OutcomeMD can start helping you enhance patient care and clinic efficiency today – click here to connect with OutcomeMD team!
*data pulled on 2/2024