Webinar: Transforming chronic care for Australian health insurers using remote patient monitoring
Webinars
February 6, 2025
Lisa White
Data from the Tasmanian Department of Health in 2023 revealed that 50% of all preventable hospitalisations in the state are related to chronic health conditions. This is a fairly familiar ratio across many of the states in Australia, and indeed on a global scale too.
It’s these preventable admissions that are a big focus for health insurers, who look for ways to better manage their customers with chronic health conditions, whilst reducing claims costs. But how can this be achieved?
One example is Tassie-based health insurer St Lukes, who work with Salveo Healthcare to deliver an Advanced Preventative Program for people with chronic health conditions. In 2023, Salveo started using Clinitouch technology to scale up their services, using remote patient monitoring to help spot signs of deterioration earlier and reduce the likelihood of their patients ending up in hospital.
In this webinar, our Head of International Partnerships, Grant Ricker, is joined by Amy Nas, Manager of Community Services at Salveo Healthcare to share a live case study of the project so far. From data strategies and focusing on clinical need, to future plans of focusing even more on prevention, we share the top takeaways from the session below.
When asked what advice she would give to other insurers who were looking to do similar projects, Amy shared the importance of “really understanding the demographics or the profile of those potential people to understand what sort of model might be the most suitable.”
She added that: “We have something that's suitable for current people, but then there's always some people that don't fit in. So we're, we're continuing to redesign how we're delivering it. We really want to be able to have options that meet the needs of all the individuals that are participating in our services.”
Existing customers are more resistant to change
Salveo’s Advanced Preventive Care program has been around since 2017, so introducing Clinitouch to existing customers has come with its own challenges. With the average age of a patient being 79, this particular cohort is more familiar with face-to-face nursing than technology.
“Existing clients traditionally love the face-to-face visits. Some of these clients have been in our program for a very long time. It commenced back in 2017 so there are some that are still part of that program. And so to make a change for those existing clients is a lot more challenging than someone who has none of those pre-expectations of a program.”
As part of future plans, Salveo aims to engage new customers, including more that are of working age. For these, remote technology is much more convenient: “if customers are still engaging in full-time employment, our team work Monday to Friday business hours, so having those face-to-face visits is a bit of a barrier”.
Relying solely on face-to-face services makes scaling difficult
One of the reasons Salveo Healthcare looked at Clinitouch in the first place was recognising that their current model wasn’t one based on clinical need, instead relying on scheduled monthly home visits. In covering such a broad area in Tassie, relying purely on face-to-face services was limiting their ability to extend the program to more customers. Amy explained that by delivering care based on clinical need with the help of technology, their capacity and responsiveness increased:
“For those people that are quite stable, we could reduce the frequency of their face to face visits, monitoring them via the dashboard and touching base with them over the phone as well to keep them engaged. But for those people where we could see that there might have started to be a decline in their health, our nurses could reach out to them.
“We could have Clinitouch prompt the patient on what to do in that immediate stage, so if there was something that was quite concerning, they would know whether they needed to call triple zero or see their doctor, or whatever the right course of action was. We could also follow up and be more responsive in seeing those people sooner, so that those that needed to be seen were getting the right care at the right time.”
Collaboration and data-driven strategies are crucial for measuring and improving healthcare program outcomes effectively
With any digital health project, it’s crucial that outcomes and other impacts are closely measured. As a healthcare provider, Salveo needs to demonstrate a positive impact on their patients, but also deliver results for the health insurer funding the program, in this case St Lukes. Amy explains how data is is becoming increasingly important as we move beyond the initial pilot:
"We are focusing on a big data strategy at the moment so that we can understand what data we need to capture, and how we need to capture it, so that we can demonstrate our effectiveness."
"But this is not just us internally at Salveo Healthcare, but also how we can work with St Lukes to combine our data and help paint the whole picture. So we're really collaborating with St Luke's to focus on some key areas when it comes to outcomes for the program.
"St Lukes are really interested in things like disease stabilisation and reduced hospitalisations - not just for private hospital admissions, but also if we're making an impact on public hospital admissions as well. In addition to that, we want to be able to look at understanding the health literacy of our clients as well, and their ability to self manage, so that we can actually have some objective data in those areas. Combining all of those things together, if we can shift the dial on them, we can see that we're really making an impact for both the people participating In the program, but also for the people that are funding the program as well.”
“So I guess our biggest bit of advice that we would give to someone who was looking to do this would be to have a clear understanding of what the data or the data points that would be required by the insurer or the customer to help measure the effectiveness of the program prior to implementation.”
To achieve truly preventative care, we still need to look earlier in the chain
Salveo’s current Advanced Preventative Care program starts with a referral post-hospitalisation, but future plans involve looking far earlier in the piece. Amy discusses how to achieve truly preventative care, we need to look earlier up the event chain, so prior to diagnosis:
“We’re looking at how we can integrate with primary care better, so that hopefully we can get somebody entering the program with a new diagnosis instead of after a hospital admission. There may be scope in the future to focus on even more prevention than that, so prior to diagnosis. Watch this space, we're not there yet!"
Webinar: Transforming chronic care for Australian health insurers using remote patient monitoring
Webinars
February 6, 2025
Lisa White
Data from the Tasmanian Department of Health in 2023 revealed that 50% of all preventable hospitalisations in the state are related to chronic health conditions. This is a fairly familiar ratio across many of the states in Australia, and indeed on a global scale too.
It’s these preventable admissions that are a big focus for health insurers, who look for ways to better manage their customers with chronic health conditions, whilst reducing claims costs. But how can this be achieved?
One example is Tassie-based health insurer St Lukes, who work with Salveo Healthcare to deliver an Advanced Preventative Program for people with chronic health conditions. In 2023, Salveo started using Clinitouch technology to scale up their services, using remote patient monitoring to help spot signs of deterioration earlier and reduce the likelihood of their patients ending up in hospital.
In this webinar, our Head of International Partnerships, Grant Ricker, is joined by Amy Nas, Manager of Community Services at Salveo Healthcare to share a live case study of the project so far. From data strategies and focusing on clinical need, to future plans of focusing even more on prevention, we share the top takeaways from the session below.
When asked what advice she would give to other insurers who were looking to do similar projects, Amy shared the importance of “really understanding the demographics or the profile of those potential people to understand what sort of model might be the most suitable.”
She added that: “We have something that's suitable for current people, but then there's always some people that don't fit in. So we're, we're continuing to redesign how we're delivering it. We really want to be able to have options that meet the needs of all the individuals that are participating in our services.”
Existing customers are more resistant to change
Salveo’s Advanced Preventive Care program has been around since 2017, so introducing Clinitouch to existing customers has come with its own challenges. With the average age of a patient being 79, this particular cohort is more familiar with face-to-face nursing than technology.
“Existing clients traditionally love the face-to-face visits. Some of these clients have been in our program for a very long time. It commenced back in 2017 so there are some that are still part of that program. And so to make a change for those existing clients is a lot more challenging than someone who has none of those pre-expectations of a program.”
As part of future plans, Salveo aims to engage new customers, including more that are of working age. For these, remote technology is much more convenient: “if customers are still engaging in full-time employment, our team work Monday to Friday business hours, so having those face-to-face visits is a bit of a barrier”.
Relying solely on face-to-face services makes scaling difficult
One of the reasons Salveo Healthcare looked at Clinitouch in the first place was recognising that their current model wasn’t one based on clinical need, instead relying on scheduled monthly home visits. In covering such a broad area in Tassie, relying purely on face-to-face services was limiting their ability to extend the program to more customers. Amy explained that by delivering care based on clinical need with the help of technology, their capacity and responsiveness increased:
“For those people that are quite stable, we could reduce the frequency of their face to face visits, monitoring them via the dashboard and touching base with them over the phone as well to keep them engaged. But for those people where we could see that there might have started to be a decline in their health, our nurses could reach out to them.
“We could have Clinitouch prompt the patient on what to do in that immediate stage, so if there was something that was quite concerning, they would know whether they needed to call triple zero or see their doctor, or whatever the right course of action was. We could also follow up and be more responsive in seeing those people sooner, so that those that needed to be seen were getting the right care at the right time.”
Collaboration and data-driven strategies are crucial for measuring and improving healthcare program outcomes effectively
With any digital health project, it’s crucial that outcomes and other impacts are closely measured. As a healthcare provider, Salveo needs to demonstrate a positive impact on their patients, but also deliver results for the health insurer funding the program, in this case St Lukes. Amy explains how data is is becoming increasingly important as we move beyond the initial pilot:
"We are focusing on a big data strategy at the moment so that we can understand what data we need to capture, and how we need to capture it, so that we can demonstrate our effectiveness."
"But this is not just us internally at Salveo Healthcare, but also how we can work with St Lukes to combine our data and help paint the whole picture. So we're really collaborating with St Luke's to focus on some key areas when it comes to outcomes for the program.
"St Lukes are really interested in things like disease stabilisation and reduced hospitalisations - not just for private hospital admissions, but also if we're making an impact on public hospital admissions as well. In addition to that, we want to be able to look at understanding the health literacy of our clients as well, and their ability to self manage, so that we can actually have some objective data in those areas. Combining all of those things together, if we can shift the dial on them, we can see that we're really making an impact for both the people participating In the program, but also for the people that are funding the program as well.”
“So I guess our biggest bit of advice that we would give to someone who was looking to do this would be to have a clear understanding of what the data or the data points that would be required by the insurer or the customer to help measure the effectiveness of the program prior to implementation.”
To achieve truly preventative care, we still need to look earlier in the chain
Salveo’s current Advanced Preventative Care program starts with a referral post-hospitalisation, but future plans involve looking far earlier in the piece. Amy discusses how to achieve truly preventative care, we need to look earlier up the event chain, so prior to diagnosis:
“We’re looking at how we can integrate with primary care better, so that hopefully we can get somebody entering the program with a new diagnosis instead of after a hospital admission. There may be scope in the future to focus on even more prevention than that, so prior to diagnosis. Watch this space, we're not there yet!"
