“Patients are not an interruption of our work; they are the purpose of it. We are not doing our patients a favor by serving them; they are doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so.”
~ James Chen, MD, Chen Medical Founder
A noble delivery of care
Being a family ourselves, we understand the importance of family, health and peace of mind. And ChenMed physicians align classic medical values with family values. We believe in a noble delivery of care that includes more than intrinsic factors and clinical acumen. It includes listening, talking and building relationships with patients so they feel like a member of our own family. Each staff member understands that he or she will be a patient some day. Therefore, we treat our patients with the same compassion and respect that we want for ourselves during our greatest moment of need.
Medicine with a mission
In addition to being active in the communities they serve, the Chen family has invested many years doing medical mission work in Central America, namely, Nicaragua. They actively support Urban Promise and AMOS and travel with other ChenMed physicians and staff each year to perform healing missions.
Our Unique Culture
Innovative culture and technology drive our core values and outcomes. By significantly investing in the patient up front, we are improving outcomes and patient services while simultaneously reducing health care costs. We do this by:
- Focusing on illness prevention, not just treatment
- Seeing patients at least once a month to foster better relationships and stay accountable for their long-term outcomes
- Lowering patient-to-physician ratios, which are about 400:1
- Providing multi-specialty experts on site allowing immediate, face-to-face peer collaboration. Many of our patients see three to five specialists, so this practice brings efficiency and more value to physicians and patients.
- Conducting physician meetings three times weekly where best practices and adverse outcomes are presented and new solutions are openly discussed
- Providing transportation to and from appointments to those patients with the greatest need to help them overcome this common barrier to treatment adherence
“We’ve created a ‘focused factory’ that looks at the needs of one population segment – moderate to low income seniors with complex conditions. We’ve created a breakthrough delivery model by constantly answering the question ‘how can we best serve their needs?”
~ Craig Tanio, MD, Chief Medical Officer
Focused Concept
To be the very best at what we do requires intense, ongoing focus. At ChenMed, our focused approach centers around one segment – moderate to low-income seniors with complex medical issues. Then, we apply our breakthrough model design around everything they need to help them achieve their best outcomes.
Our Physician Culture
“We’re truly a physician-led culture where doctors make both business and patient care decisions. Because of this, our doctors are nimble, innovative and entrepreneurial. They are part of a culture that provides them the same benefits as private practice and academia but without the tradeoffs of politics, hiring freezes, fee-for-service hassles and sacrificing quality care. Our physicians are on the front line of care delivery innovation, research and are regarded as community leaders. At ChenMed, we practice medicine the way it should be practiced. Our physicians truly enjoy and excel at patient care and are rewarded for it.”
~ Craig Tanio, MD, Chief Medical Officer
ChenMed is a private company where physicians make both business and patient decisions. Our physicians are nimble, innovative, entrepreneurial and able to support our patients within a culture that provides the best benefits from both private practice and academia. Our physicians:
- Focus on patient outcomes
- Specialize in managing chronic complex diseases
- Collaborate with medical peers
— Our medical center layout resembles a highly modern ambulatory intensive care unit creating an open space for more efficient communication with other physicians and staff
— Morbidity and mortality meetings held three times each week to allow case sharing and peer review
- Remain on the front line of health care delivery innovation
- Are regarded as community leaders
- Get involved in breakthrough clinical research
- Are well-supported by staff who work closely with them (top 10% in physician-to-staff ratios)
- Work regular weekday hours from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. allowing better work/life balance
- Earn a good income in a well-run facility but without the tradeoffs of politics, hiring freezes, fee-for-service hassles and sacrificing quality care.
Our experts practice medicine the way it should be practiced – in a supportive environment where really great doctors who truly enjoy and excel at patient care can shine and be rewarded for it.
“We practice medicine the way it should be practiced. We aren’t content with the status quo. We don’t take shortcuts. And we’re obsessed with how to improve care.”
~ Gordon Chen, MD, SVP Medical Affairs and National Market Development
Enabling Technology to Transform Care Delivery
“We developed our own smart technology and designed it for end-to-end support of our ChenMed culture and patient care philosophy. We currently operate over 35 application solutions. This technology includes everything from the way we update critical patient data and efficiently check in patients for their visits to the innovative way we dispense prescription medications in house. ChenMed received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study our computerized robotic pharmaceutical delivery system, QuiqMeds. Early data suggests that providing a three-months’ supply of prescription drugs on-site has almost doubled adherence to physicians’ recommendations and has reduced racial disparities. It’s a win for everyone.”
~ Jessica Chen, MD, Chief Quality Officer
ChenMed uses smart technology that’s fully customized, end-to-end, to support our culture and patient care philosophy. We currently operate over 35 application solutions. A few of them include:
- A customized and unified Electronic Medical Record system that shares patient data between all of our physicians, thereby improving seamless access to patient information in every Chen Medical Center and JenCare Neighborhood Medical Center. The EMR is custom designed by ChenMed for the full risk primary care physician. We have designed our EMR so that physicians are not typing on the computer in front of patients.
- Life Card is a wallet-sized card that features the patient’s name, photo, known allergies and critical medications. A custom app enables the most recent copy of the patient’s EKG to be printed on the back of the card. Patients receive updated Life Cards regularly to keep with them in case of an emergency.
- Air Traffic Control helps integrate and monitor the entire patient experience. Patients can check in for appointments by simply swiping their Life Card. A monitor in our reception area shows the patient’s name and photo so we can greet them properly. The system also alerts the staff LPN that the patient has arrived and preparations for their appointment begin. Once a patient scans his/her card at check-in, a clock begins tracking their wait time. This technology allows us to monitor our patient wait times to ensure that no patient is left waiting longer than 15-30 minutes.
- Computerized robotic pharmacy replacement system, QuiqMeds delivers medications for patients before they leave their appointment. More than 85% of our patients’ prescriptions are dispensed in this manner, and many in 90-day supplies. This technology allows physicians extra time to discuss medication instructions more thoroughly with patients and answer their questions.
Preliminary data supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation suggests use of this technology has almost doubled adherence to physicians’ recommendations and has reduced racial disparities.
- Smartphone integration allows on-call physicians’ remote access to all pertinent patient data.
- Chen Financial Services enables doctors and administrators to track key performance indicators in real time, by practice and their peers (names removed) as a reference.
- Chen Hospital Systems operates similarly to an inpatient-outpatient Twitter function. Inpatient physicians are able to submit real time clinical data feeds to the outpatient primary care physician so that the inpatient care can be closely managed.
- ChenMed Education iPad app provides patients a customized educational solution that is available during and after appointments. (click here to download at iTunes)
Preliminary data suggests that physician dispensing through QuiqMeds, our digital robotic pharmacy dispensing system has almost doubled adherence to physicians’ recommendations and has reduced racial disparities. “Too often, senior populations have trouble getting their medicines and taking them. So this is where innovation has created a win-win for us.”
~ Jessica Chen, MD, Chief Quality Officer
Our results
Our innovative focused model, physician led culture and enabling technology drive key quality and cost outcomes that create value for patients, physicians and the overall health care system. These results include:
- Better patient access to quality care for a population that often receives too little primary care
- High adherence to drug treatment plans at rates
- Lower hospitalization and readmission rates
- Improved clinical outcomes such as LDL levels for patients on drug treatment and HgbA1C levels for diabetics
- High patient satisfaction as measured by net promoter scores which are at an industry leading low 90s.
- High word-of-mouth patient referrals which creates ongoing growth of patients
These results have received national attention. ChenMed has been invited to speak at the White House Physician Forum on Health Reform in 2009 as well as the CMS Innovation Summit in 2012. We continue to look for opportunities to collaborate with other innovators and national health care leaders.