2018 in Review

Posted by: BeneFIT Corporate Wellness
Date: December 17, 2018

Populytics celebrates its fifth anniversary this month. To recognize this milestone, we wanted to share some of Populytics’ top accomplishments for 2018. We’re gearing up for continued progress in 2019 amidst the demands of an ever-changing health care industry and marketplace.

• Healthier people: Our analytics work with Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) has helped physicians succeed in closing care gaps across their patient panels, making headway toward improved population health. (That can refer to community populations and employee populations.) Almost 400,000 care gaps were closed in 2018. The top 62 physician’s practices, affiliated with Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) and Lehigh Valley Physician Hospital Organization (LVPHO), achieved above a 70 percent closure rate (as of September 2018).
• Enhancing education: Populytics president and CEO and Chief Insurance Officer for LVHN, Gregory Kile, presented to students at Moravian College at an open forum in April. He discussed how we use health care analytics to improve care and bend the cost curve, benefitting health providers and employers. Patrick Kincaid, Senior IT Operations and Business Process Specialist, shared similar insights with a visiting group of doctors, providers, and administrators from Universidad Peruana de Ciencias inLima, Peru in May.
• Health insurance: Through Populytics’ collaborative data sharing with payers and LVHN, we have seen significant advancements in care coordination across LVHN’s regional footprint. This factor has been key to the expansion of Lehigh Valley Flex Blue, the health insurance product developed through a Highmark/LVHN collaboration that’s already covering employees at more than 50 local companies.

Awards, Recognitions, and Presentations

• Fastest Growing Companies: We won for a second year in a row. Stacy Asbell, FAHM, FSIL, CIOP, CBC, CHC, Vice President, Operations and Health Plan Management, accepted the award that ranks Populytics No. 21 among 45 progressive Lehigh Valley companies in 2018.
• Health Care Heroes: Robert X. Murphy, Jr, MD, MS, CPE, FACS, Chief Medical Officer at Populytics and Chief Integration Officer at LVHN, won local acclaim as a health care innovator at home and overseas. He was instrumental in bringing the concept of telemedicine to LVHN after seeing its early phases at work in China, and he helps advance medical education in South America, Africa, and Europe.
• 90 Ideas in 90 Minutes: Gregory Kile shared his practical views on business success at DeSales University in June. This event gathered nine of the region’s top business leaders and asked them for their 10 best business ideas – from best practices and programs to philosophies – that have helped grow their businesses.
• Leadership and innovation: Lora Bastin, Director, Strategy and Business Development, was named a local innovator as a Forty Under 40 award winner, a recognition sponsored by Lehigh Valley Business.
• AMGA Optum Award: LVHN received the 2018 AMGA–Optum Award for Innovation in Population Health, made possible through the analytics work completed with Populytics. The award recognizes our system of clinically based predictive modeling, built on the Optum One population health analytics platform, to implement improvements in care. Nina Taggart, MA, MD, MBA, FAAO, Senior Medical Director of Accountable Care with LVPHO, accepted the award.
• Optum Performance Analytics: Mike Weiss, Senior Health Economist, Nicole Longbons, CHDA, Manager, Clinical and Business Analytics at Populytics, and Nina Taggart, MA, MD, MBA, FAAO, Senior Director of Accountable Care at LVPHO represented Populytics’ pioneer status at Optum Forum, Las Vegas, Nevada in July. Mike was part of an expert panel discussing Optum’s new flagship platform, Optum Performance Analytics. Dr. Taggart and Nicole presented, “Leveraging Analytics to Create and Inform Care Pathways.”

New collaboration

Populytics is bringing occupational health and safety, behavioral health counseling and consultation, and corporate wellness together into one cohesive portfolio of services for employers. Stay tuned for our new brand, and see some of the achievements under these employer services below:

Behavioral health

• Reasonable Suspicion training: We have introduced a training program for managers who suspect an employee may be using drugs or alcohol. The program conforms to legal requirements for requesting an employee drug/alcohol test.

Occupational health

• Beating the benchmarks: After looking at the 10 most frequent occupational injuries treated and comparing the days until return to full work against national statistics, our occupational health provider is ahead. One category matched and nine beat the national median.
• Options for drug testing: We have introduced saliva-based drug tests, which, in some circumstances, offer benefits over traditional urine testing. These include security, efficiency, and no need for special collection facilities.

Corporate wellness

• Results from 2018: Some of the statistics that were collected about our corporate wellness program are impressive:
  • 89% of coaching participants have met or are working toward achieving self-set goals in 2018
  • Satisfaction:
    • Health Fair/Screening Events
      99% participant satisfaction
      99% of participants are likely to recommend the program
    • Health Coaching
      100% participant satisfaction
      99% likely to recommend health coaching
  • 99% of Health Assessment participants had their blood pressure checked within the past year
• Global effort: We hosted representatives from the Korea Health Promotion Institute in Seoul, South Korea, while they visited the East Coast in search of guidance regarding the certification of Health Education Specialists. Their visit with us was intended to enhance the visitors’ understanding of the function of Certified Health Education Specialists in the U.S. workforce, and to learn more about our nation’s worksite wellness career sector.
• Outstanding Service and Leadership Award: BeneFIT presented the first Leadership in Wellness Recognition awards at the LVBCH Annual Conference, May 3 at DeSales University.
• Engagement: Two members of the corporate wellness team were selected to present at the National Wellness Conference, June 18-20 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sarah Engler, MCHES®, Manager, Health Education and Wellness, and Tiffany Ritter, RD, LDN, CHWC, NBC-HWC, Health Coach, spoke to attendees at Saint Paul RiverCentre on the topics of resilience and emotional eating, respectively.