Healthcare Snapshot

September 2023

Join PSW at Annual Fall NAACOS Conference

Multiple PSW executives will be headed to Washington D.C. to present at the annual fall NAACOS conference in September. PSW presentations include:

• Melanie Matthews, CEO: Medicare ACO and Primary Care Models: Mix-in, Mash-up, or Move Aside?

• Tamra Ruymann, Chief of Digital Health: Harnessing Analytics for Performance Optimization: Insights and Strategies for Excelling in VBC.

• Jake Woods, Executive Director, ACO: MA's Shifting Landscape and Implications for MA Risk.

• Sam Johnmeyer, Director of Actuarial Services: Embracing Risk and Achieving Success through Multi-Payer Alignment.

The team looks forward to sharing best practices and unique ideas with other ACOs across the nation. Check out the October PSW Healthcare Snapshot for a debrief of PSW presentations.

PSW Joins Arbor Health Wellness Week Health Expo

PSW's Director of Post Acute Networks, Jenny Gonnerman, represented PSW in Morton, WA this summer at Arbor Health's Wellness Week Health Expo. Jenny spent time with local residents to talk about preventative health and educate the community on the importance of fall risk screenings.

The PSW Care Management Team reached out to a patient following their visit to the Emergency Department for shortness of breath and pneumonia. After discussing the patient’s needs with the PSW Nurse Care Manager, the patient shared that they were running out of medications and did not know what to do other than go back to the Emergency Department. 

The PSW Nurse Care Manager was able to convince the patient that there were other ways they could receive help and the nurse was able to secure an appointment for the patient with an access clinic Advanced Practice Nurse Practitioner (ARNP). With this support, the patient’s medications and inhalers were refilled right away. Also, the care team felt it was important to monitor the patient’s breathing and oxygen levels, so the patient was enrolled into PSW’s Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) program. This program helped to deliver timely information to the care team to continue supporting the patient.

The PSW Nurse Care Manager then began working to help the patient become established with a Primary Care Provider (PCP). The patient mentioned that they feared going to the doctor and that they had not seen a PCP in over 8 years. However, the patient felt so comfortable with the PSW Nurse Care Manager that they agreed to finding a new PCP and begin working to turn their life around. The patient has now engaged in efforts to quit smoking and has already reduced their daily smoking from a pack per day to only 2 cigarettes per day. The patient is also working with the nurse on a plan to start nicotine patches and complete a Medicaid application to receive help from local food banks in the area.

To this day, this patient is still enrolled in PSW services, regularly engages with multiple members of their care team, and carries a newly positive attitude towards improving their health.