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. 2020 Oct;35(10):3077-3080.
doi: 10.1007/s11606-020-05981-1. Epub 2020 Jul 27.

Primary Care Population Management for COVID-19 Patients

Deborah Blazey-Martin  1 , Elizabeth Barnhart  2 , Joseph Gillis Jr  2 , Gabriela Andujar Vazquez  3
Affiliations

Primary Care Population Management for COVID-19 Patients

Deborah Blazey-Martin et al. J Gen Intern Med. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

Background: Most patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 have mild to moderate symptoms manageable at home; however, up to 20% develop severe illness requiring additional support. Primary care practices performing population management can use these tools to remotely assess and manage COVID-19 patients and identify those needing additional medical support before becoming critically ill.

Aim: We developed an innovative population management approach for managing COVID-19 patients remotely.

Setting: Development, implementation, and evaluation took place in April 2020 within a large urban academic medical center primary care practice.

Participants: Our panel consists of 40,000 patients. By April 27, 2020, 305 had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-qPCR. Outreach was performed by teams of doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and nurses.

Program description: Our innovation includes an algorithm, an EMR component, and a twice daily population report for managing COVID-19 patients remotely.

Program evaluation: Of the 305 patients with COVID-19 in our practice at time of submission, 196 had returned to baseline; 54 were admitted to hospitals, six of these died, and 40 were discharged.

Discussion: Our population management strategy helped us optimize at-home care for our COVID-19 patients and enabled us to identify those who require inpatient medical care in a timely fashion.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they do not have a conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
COVID-19 outreach algorithm.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
COVID-19 outreach EMR component (GE Centricity).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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