CareSpark

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In a community that has the unfortunate high statistics when it comes to premature mortality, chronic disease and death by prescription drug overdose, there was an immediate need to raise awareness, exchange information and improve overall healthcare. And that’s how CareSpark came to be.

Previously known as the Central Appalachian Improvement Partnership (CAIP), CareSpark later changed its name because of two reasons. “Care was warmer and more relative to the human side of the industry; it’s also a hidden acronym for the Central Appalachian Region. The second part—Spark—was added because we wanted to convey our ability to motivate people to be innovative and be that impetus for positive change,” says Liesa Jenkins, Executive Director at CareSpark.
 
The is a non-profit regional health information network exchange working to improve health in a 34-county area of east Tennessee and southwest Virginia through the collaborative use of health information. Prior to the formation of this organization, there was no way to monitor or measure how the health system could be more efficient or, at least identify areas of improvement.

Over the past decade, however, CareSpark has evolved a great deal starting with the shifting focus from discrepancies in the system to reinforcing the need for industry standards. “We had healthcare organizations that implemented an electronic medical record system but they couldn’t talk to each other. At the end, when we are able to get reports out it was like comparing apples to oranges so, the move towards standards has been very positive,” says Jenkins. By asking questions like what are the needs of the community and where are the gaps, CareSpark has been mortar between the bricks. “These blocks, per say, include: Medicaid or Medicare programs or other pay incentives, but, together with CareSpark, they all work as ameba that sort of floats in between the building blocks,” describes Jenkins.

Customer base leans on support network

In the region that CareSpark services, there are two major hospitals systems with almost equal market share. In other words, neither one of the healthcare facilities dominates. CareSpark approached the stakeholders with an open-minded and flexible approach. “It was important for us to be neutral even though it was among just the two hospitals. What we needed was physician participation,” explains Jenkins.

The type of services offered by CareSpark include: access to clinical information services with the exception of billing, claims and other administrative details. “We really wanted to two critical kinds of information. One is a coordination of care and clinical research support. Second is to address the health disparities in the region,” tells Jenkins. The last one is particularly challenging when it comes to battling cancer or heart disease, for example.

One of the ways CareSpark addresses this latter issue is to raise overall awareness and expansion of services. “We’ve even had interest from providers outside of this service (Virginia and Tennessee) area who don’t have health information exchange,” tells Jenkins. “This expansion of support services would essentially double our user base for the infrastructure we’ve built which then reduces the cost,” she explains.
 
Since 2006, CareSpark has been working on a key milestone that they are striving to reach this year. And that is committing to a nationwide information exchange. “We fully expect to bring out a gateway in the three months in order to exchange information with others, including those being developed within the federal agencies,” tells Jenkins. “For us, the exchange between the Veteran’s Association (VA) is always a high-priority because of the high percentage—10 percent of our total population—of aging veterans just in our service area alone,” she says. Over 15 percent of the population in the central Appalachian region has some sort of physical or mental disability. “About two thirds of our doctors and patients are from the Tennessee side, another one third from Virginia as well as a few from Kentucky.

In addition to reaching out beyond its service area, CareSpark is looking at ways to build overall financial stability. “We were formed as a not-for profit because we knew that start up funds we’d have to get grants, contributions and donations.

To date, we’ve collected about $10 million that has been invested into our organization’s infrastructure over four years,” shares Jenkins. About 50 percent of that figure come from public funds; a third from in-kind contributions from local organizations and then, the remainder comes from cash or, pay for fee service from employer health plans,” she tells.

Partnerships key to success

Looking into the future, CareSpark is focused on sustainability. “We want to see that amount received from pay-for fee service but also reduce our reliance on in-kin contributions and donations,” says Jenkins. With strong partnerships with local businesses and a consortium of technology companies, CareSpark is pushing forward as a leader in exchange networks.

“When we first started, we didn’t really have anything like it in the area but we did have technology companies providing services to banks and such. We got involved with them early on and they brought the general knowledge in technology to our overall project,” explains Jenkins.

“We’ve seen growth in our small technology companies through their relationship with CareSpark and others they are introduced to—that’s has lead to an increase in jobs, growing awareness of the economic impact that can be derived from healthcare IT—they are advocates for our organization,” shares Jenkins. This word of mouth publicity has done the organization well for political, financial and community support for our efforts,” she says.

With a demonstrated will to instill a sense of leadership and standards to the regional healthcare systems, CareSpeak plans on continuing to support the regional communities as well as nationwide.

www.carespark.com