TrueCare Chief Innovation Officer Tracy Elmer and Artera Receive 2022 CHIME Collaboration Award
ANN ARBOR, MI, November 18, 2022 – Reducing patient no-show rates by 4 percent while giving staff back more time for what matters most- patient care supportive activities- is highly valuable. Promoting health equity and putting the patient in control of when and how they like to communicate is priceless. That is exactly what the collaborative partnership between TrueCare and Artera, formerly known as WELL Health, created for the diverse and underserved communities in San Diego and Riverside County. For these contributions and many others, the College of Information Management Executives (CHIME) has honored Tracy Elmer, Chief Innovation Officer of TrueCare, and Artera with the 2022 CHIME Collaboration Award for their partnership.
The CHIME Collaboration Award is given annually to recognize a CIO who is a CHIME member and a CHIME Foundation firm who together offer a benefit to the healthcare IT community. The winners are given an opportunity to share their innovative collaboration and its outcomes with CHIME members for possible application in other healthcare environments.
Prior to their partnership, TrueCare was struggling with record high no-show rates and high call volume – even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Arguably more significant, however, was a lack of bidirectional, flexible communication with their patients that would meet them where they are: on their phones and in their preferred languages.
“TrueCare has been providing heartfelt, compassionate care for over 50 years. A core element of our patient engagement strategy was to innovate how we actually connect with our patient; ensuring that we not only meet their healthcare needs, but all the aspects of how they engage with it,” said Tracy A. Elmer, MS, CHCIO, CDH-E, RHIA, Chief Innovation Officer for TrueCare. Ultimately, “communicating with patients in the way that best makes sense to them helps promote health equity”, as noted by Ana Ramon, TrueCare’s Member Access Point Director.
Little did they know COVID-19 would soon surprise us all and radically transform the entire industry. TrueCare had carefully evaluated numerous patient communication vendors just a few months prior and ultimately selected Artera as its partner. The scope of implementation grew dramatically and quickly in response to the pandemic and would not have been successful without the playbook provided by Artera.
The collaborative approach between TrueCare and Artera went well beyond the technology. Each organization brought to the table an open mind and a willingness to partner together to find a solution, which ultimately improved the patient experience.
“As a CIO I understand that the significance and meaning of innovation goes well beyond technology. It takes people and context to bring it to life,” said Elmer.
Since the depths of the pandemic, the health center has reached 150,000 patients via the Artera platform and has sent 8.3 million messages to its patient population – approximately 900,000 of which were within the first 30 days of implementing the texting platform.
Alongside Elmer to accept the CHIME Collaboration Award at the Fall Forum conference earlier this month was Guillaume de Zwirek, CEO & Founder of Artera. “The TrueCare and Artera partnership is a best-in-class example for vendor-provider collaboration,” said de Zwirek. “Thanks to the open, collaborative nature of our partnership, we worked together to overcome technical barriers to implementation and improved the patient experience during the most challenging time in healthcare’s history – the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Today, we can never underestimate the power and importance of partnership and how investing time in building that relationship makes a significant difference – not only in a moment of time, but for the long haul.
About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs), chief medical information officers (CMIOs), chief nursing information officers (CNIOs), chief innovation officers (CIOs), chief digital officers (CDOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 5,000 members in 58 countries plus two U.S. territories and over 190 healthcare IT business partners and professional services firms, CHIME and its three associations provide a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate, exchange best practices, address professional development needs and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and care in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.
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