Ellicott City, MD – October 10, 2018 – Warrior Centric Health is pleased to announce that Vizient, Inc published a Field Guide for Improving Care for Veterans. It highlights the collaborative work Warrior Centric Health and Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) did to better understand and care for veteran patient populations. Vizient, Inc., is the largest member-driven health care performance improvement company in the country, providing innovative data-driven solutions, expertise and collaborative opportunities that lead to improved patient outcomes and lower costs.

To read the Official Vizient Press Release, please click here.

The recently released field guide, published by Vizient and produced by Vizient partner and equity champion Lisa Sloane and her team at MiH, focuses on the collection and use of veteran status during a collaborative engagement between Warrior Centric Health and LVHN. It is titled Trends in Demographic Data Collection and Use in Healthcare: A Field Guide for Improving Care for Veterans. The field guide details the relationship, the learning, and the measured results in the Lehigh Valley veteran community.

Warrior Centric Health’s COO, Kate Van Name said, “We are proud of the work we do with our clients and the recognition given to our work by Vizient. Sometimes healthcare professionals can get lost in the jargon and the technology and the numbers. But at WCH, we start each day with the Veteran patient top of mind – and so do our partners, collaborators, and clients. It is powerful.”

Currently, the one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare leaves vulnerable patient populations under-served, with a higher rate of sub-optimal outcomes. Our nation’s 23+ million Veterans, Reserves, and National Guard stand out as a population that warrants optimal care, but faces significant hurdles in receiving it. As a 2018 RAND Corporation study states: “Veterans represent a clinically complex population, experiencing higher rates of suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, diabetes, hearing loss, and cancer.” In addition:

• 79% of Gulf War Era veterans report multiple chronic diseases.
• Male veterans, ages 45-64, are significantly more likely than non-veterans to suffer from two or more chronic health conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, asthma and kidney disease.
• Veterans experience a higher prevalence of pain and more severe pain than non-veterans.

Nine out of ten Veterans currently receive some level of healthcare in the private sector and more than 70% receive ALL healthcare from private healthcare facilities, which are woefully unprepared to diagnose and treat them. This unpreparedness conveys to a loss in effective patient/provider communications.

“When hospitals, health systems, and clinics are committed to educating themselves about the specifics of Veteran Health, they significantly increase the probability of a Veteran being diagnosed correctly,” said  Ron Steptoe, CEO of Warrior Centric Health. “This leads to lower readmission rates, lower costs, better clinical outcomes, and higher patient satisfaction ratings. This is good for the hospital, the patient, their family, and this nation.”

Private healthcare systems are largely unaware of this issue—only 57 percent of hospitals screen patients for military service. And even those who are aware aren’t prepared to deal with it— only one in ten actually use the data they collect to identify care gaps.

There are the medical issues, of course. How do you optimally diagnose and treat patients with sets of symptoms that don’t fit the normal expectations for their profiles? Clinicians simply are not aware or prepared. They need training.

Along with a suite of developed solutions, Warrior Centric Health partners with clients to identify and develop additional solutions to address healthcare disparities and gaps in care specific to their veteran community. We also work as a valued team member with hospitals to craft good and best practices. WCH has provided four best practices in the Field Guide to help increase an organization’s chances for successful data collection. These emphasize the importance of knowing a patient’s veteran status which will provide the healthcare professional the ability to provide high quality care tailored to a Veteran’s unique needs. Of course, patients are under no obligation to report their veteran status and can decline to answer questions about their military service.

If you have any questions about these practices, would like more information about Warrior Centric Health’s solutions, or would like to discuss the work Warrior Centric Health does with our clients, please contact WCH.

About Warrior Centric Health

Warrior Centric Health® (WCH) is the nation’s first commercial health equity solutions provider. WCH provides decision-support data and analysis, training, and community outreach solutions to healthcare providers and institutions to optimize care for vulnerable populations – such as veterans and their families – who share unique health and wellness issues. The Warrior Centric Health Solution Suite is a rigorous set of tools to optimally communicate with as well as care for veterans and their families—as much as 25% of the population in the hospitals’ communities.