Improving whole-patient care and student education through partnership

By Anna Crosetti | MEMBER SPOTLIGHTS | Comments are Closed | 16 December, 2024 | 0

December 16, 2024

The University of Western States has been delivering integrated health care education to students and providing specialized clinical care to the Northeast Portland, Oregon, community since 1904. Their clinic, Connected Whole Health, serves as a vital access point for their community members, offering complimentary chiropractic care, sports injury rehabilitation, and, starting in April, naturopathic medicine.

As the needs of their community and university have evolved, so has Connected Whole Health. As an OCHIN member for more than a decade, the aptly named clinic has leveraged their OCHIN Epic EHR system to evolve their practice, helping their community bridge gaps in specialty health care access and improve patient outcomes through high-quality, whole-patient care.

“Our focus remains on centering the patient in their health care journey, fostering collaborative, safe, and evidence-informed care pathways. We are excited do this in a way that is highly tech-enabled through OCHIN Epic, while remaining highly personable and accessible to our patients,” said Patrick Battaglia, DC, DACBR, assistant vice president of community-based clinical education at UWS.

“OCHIN Epic allows us to use the top EHR on the market, with interoperable features that help us connect and improve patient care. It also supports patient communication through MyChart while remaining highly secure and is excellent for a multidisciplinary setting.”

Overcoming barriers to specialty care

Patients across the nation face barriers to accessing specialty care, and residents of the neighborhood served by Connected Whole Health are no exception. For chiropractic care in particular, these barriers often include health insurance policies that either fail to cover the cost of services or offer low reimbursement rates.

“Traditionally, there’s a high barrier to access this type of care,” said Battaglia. “So we’ve been really intentional about trying to make our services more accessible to the community.”

The barriers that Connected Whole Health’s community members face reflect a national trend. A recent OCHIN network analysis found that the average wait time to see a specialist has risen to 60 days, with significantly delayed referrals having only a 40% likelihood of being completed. As health care workforce shortages persist amid an aging population and systemic barriers, these wait times are expected to continue increasing.

The power of partnership in meeting patients where they are

To connect with people beyond the walls of their clinic and improve the education provided to their students, Connected Whole Health emphasizes engaging with people in the communities where they live, work, and play. By partnering with local organizations and participating in events—such as a recent gathering for Indigenous people—clinic staff and students can converse with community members in a comfortable, neutral setting. These conversations also focus on educating the public about a new model the clinic is adopting, which offers many services to patients free of charge and provides a unique learning opportunity for their students.

“We’re really doubling down on our commitment to education and to community impact, and our services are effectively complimentary to the public,” said Battaglia. “As an academic health center, our mission and values are high-quality clinical teaching and learning, and meaningful community service. Therefore, we want to make sure folks have a high level of access to chiropractic and naturopathic care, and we want to make sure our students have a really diverse patient population to serve as they learn.”

In addition to their partnership in the local community, Connected Whole Health also values the collaborative nature of the OCHIN network and the tools OCHIN provides.

“Integrating across the OCHIN network has allowed us to provide a higher level of continuity of care for patients,” Battaglia said. “Having access through a shared platform like OCHIN Epic and having the resources of an organization like OCHIN to support a smaller academic center like us allows us to provide a high level of care overall.”