Essentia Health

Essentia Health is an integrated health system serving patients in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Idaho. Essentia began fully integrating comprehensive medication management (CMM) services in the summer of 2010, bringing together the resources of its member organizations – SMDC Health System, Innovis Health, Brainerd Lakes Health and the Essentia Institute of Rural Health. Essentia Health combines the strengths of over 13,900 employees, including nearly 1,800 physicians and advanced practitioners.

Mission and Vision

Essentia Health’s mission is to make a healthy difference in people’s lives while being a national leader in providing high quality, cost effective, integrated health care services. Their values include quality, hospitality, respect, justice, stewardship and teamwork. Their highest priority has always been and always will be the people they serve, and they strongly believe in the value of integrated health care services.

Patient Population

  • Total number of patients: 533,994
  • Number of high risk patients: 119,268
  • Number of high risk patients not at goal: 39,879 (33%)
  • Current number of high risk patients receiving CMM services: 4,193
  • Number of high risk patients being tracked: 989 (24%)

Goals

Essentia Health joined AIMM in 2012 with an initial goal of getting the A1c levels of 90 patients with diabetes under 9. Essentia also set a goal of having clinical pharmacy services accessible at all of its clinics to collaborate with care teams and patients to improve outcomes for patients with diabetes, asthma, depression, hypertension, vascular disease and/or chronic pain by 2017.

Achievements

  • Successfully helped 75% of their initial population of focus (90 patients with diabetes) get their A1c levels under 9 within 6 months
  • Successfully integrated pharmacy with primary care
  • Has a proven track record of effectively using telepharmacy to reach patients
  • Has a firm understanding of operational needs to be able to scale up

Long Term Goals

Scale up and spread to more populations in need as well as closing the gap for high risk patients not yet at their goals by 2020. Develop needs assessment and justification for hiring 20 full time employees to serve and reach all high risk patients.

For more information about Essentia Health’s experience with AIMM, please contact Kirsten Stone at kirsten.stone@essentiahealth.org or Danielle MacDonald at danielle.macdonald@essentiahealth.org. For more information about AIMM, please contact Cindy Schaller at cschaller@aimmweb.org.