EvidenceNOW Leads to Huge Gains for Small Oklahoma Practice
Busy solo primary care practitioner seeks a tenacious problem-solver who can help her practice improve patient care by making better use of electronic health records (EHR).
A nurse practitioner at a small clinic in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, might have posted that ad in early 2016. Like many primary care providers, she wanted to focus exclusively on her passion—delivering personalized care to her largely female and Latino patients. The business and technology aspects of practice were not her priority. Besides, who has time after seeing 30 patients a day?
The clinician got her wish in mid-2016 after signing up her one-provider family medicine practice for EvidenceNOW. The clinic received 6 months of part-time tailored support from Mrs. Missy McCullough, a University of Oklahoma practice facilitator, who has helped 16 clinics in Oklahoma troubleshoot a variety of day-to-day challenges, including data extraction and EHR use.
That part-time support made all the difference. With Missy's EHR training and guidance on how to tease out key data from patients' medical records, the Broken Arrow clinic's care team made significant gains. Progress under EvidenceNOW included:
- Increasing blood pressure measurement for patients at risk of heart attack and stroke from 49 percent before EvidenceNOW to 82 percent
- Identifying twice as many patients with hypertension at the practice and monitoring their health
- Improving reporting so the practice could obtain payments for better EHR use
These changes not only helped to improve patients' heart health care, they helped put the practice on more stable financial footing. The practice was able to expand by hiring a second nurse practitioner, and the care team is now able to serve even more people in their community.
This story is courtesy of Healthy Hearts for Oklahoma, the EvidenceNOW Oklahoma Cooperative.
