Insights in Action: Case Review

Now that you understand our data sources and all that may be available to you, we will introduce a "synthetic" or "sandbox" patient story. Sandbox patients are intended to mimic real patients you may be caring for, but these cases are artificially generated! Let's walk through the a case below to illuminate how Particle's Platform can supercharge your workflows so you can put the focus back on the patient.

P.S. We recognize that a variety of organization types work with us, so if Hart's story doesn't resonate, feel free to read about our other Sandbox patients and image how these use cases might apply.

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Meet Hart Fallon

Hart is a 72 y.o. morbidly obese, former smoker with congestive heart failure and a history of poorly controlled diabetes with stage 3a renal failure, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and anemia.

Due to worsening CHF, he was referred for a cardiology consult at his last visit with you. Unfortunately, the waitlist to be seen by a cardiologist was 2 months. In the interim, he been struggling with food access and his sodium intake has skyrocketed due to fast food and frozen meals. He's been to the hospital 3 times and even admitted inpatient for CHF exacerbations - with each event taking place at a different facility.

Hart needs help!

You reconnect with Hart during routine follow up appointment ~3 months later. He shares that he's been in the hospital several times recently. He reports having several tests and some dose changes of his medications when he was discharged, but he can't remember specifics.

In the interim, he was able to finally see the cardiologist. They ordered a few repeat labs but nobody called him with the results and he hopes you can review those with him today.

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During the visit

Can't find discharge summary, cardiology referral note, lab or imaging results...

You check your EHR, 2 lab portals, a diagnostic imaging portal, and a stack of papers in the fax machine yet to be uploaded. No luck. To boot, you can't remember your password to all of the systems...

You ultimately end the visit without making many changes to the treatment plan because there are too many gaps in history to safely and appropriately guide care. You also apologize for not having access to those results or provider notes to answer his questions.

After the attempts to gather critical information from multiple facilities on multiple EHR systems, minutes (maybe hours?) of hold time, phone tag from community providers, and skimming hundreds of pages of scanned medical records, your team has filled the gaps in Hart's current care, and you are able to manage him effectively once again.

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Debrief

This patient presentation may sound familiar; it may even sound relatively basic or uncomplicated. We recognize these are common barriers to care that threaten patient outcomes, safety, and satisfaction, care team engagement, and risk waste or misuse of services.

Particle Health is intentionally positioned to help solve for these pain points and, unofficially, #destroythefaxmachine.