Collaboration across industry partners is essential for driving innovation, improving quality, and enhancing efficiency in healthcare. By leveraging the diverse expertise, innovative ideas, and resources of different stakeholders, healthcare partners can address complex challenges, improve healthcare delivery, and ultimately achieve better outcomes for individuals and communities.
In conjunction with the Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT, Luminate Health and PathGroup, a provider of comprehensive anatomic, clinical, and molecular lab services, including Women’s Health testing, across 25 states, collaborated to address challenges in maternal health care. By leveraging their expertise across the partnership, the teams developed and implemented a maternal health program that supports HHS’ commitment to improving the overall care of maternal patients through enhanced patient access to health records and health education. The program consists of a targeted maternal health wellness program, directing patients to new and accessible patient education, while also tracking key metrics to measure the program’s success.
The program kicked off in December 2022, celebrating its one-year anniversary at the ONC Annual Meeting in Washington, DC this past December, where PathGroup and Luminate teams gathered to present on the program’s success with other key stakeholders.
Partnering with PathGroup
As one of the country’s largest providers of comprehensive laboratory testing services, PathGroup has extensive experience delivering quality testing to patients across the country. The lab played a critical role in the maternal health program’s success. The lab is often one of the first contacts made with patients, with lab staff having close patient relationships and helping other providers and digital health partners, such as Luminate Health, understand and prioritize the patient’s perspective.
Leveraging PathGroup’s comprehensive insight into the standard testing protocols for each trimester, the two partners developed and provided educational materials to all patients enrolled in the program, promoting improved health literacy and health equity across the population.
PathGroup’s goal for this patient population was to improve adherence to testing regimens and empower patients with educational material that allows these maternal health patients to better engage in their overall health and communicate their care needs effectively. The high levels of patient engagement and participation of this program surpassed the team’s expectations, with approximately 3,000 women participating in the program as of April 2024. Receiving positive feedback from engaged patients the PathGroup team reported back, “We learned a lot about how patients interacted with this program. We will use the patient input we receive to tailor future programs.” (Amy Nichols, Vice President, Customer Applications and Analytics).
PathGroup is optimistic that this type of interaction with patients can help increase patient awareness about specific health conditions or diseases. Ultimately, PathGroup can use the data from these programs to partner with digital health partners for early detection and prevention of disease. “We can advocate and promote early screening or follow-up testing for patients who have had testing in the past, said Amy Nichols, Vice President of Customer Applications and Analytics at PathGroup.” .
Luminate’s Perspective
Luminate supports its lab partners through collaborative efforts emphasizing the importance of lab tests, patient education, and accessibility, and believes in the value of laboratory data to advance patient care and disease management. By working alongside laboratory organizations to identify specific patient populations, digital health partners can better identify patient needs and subsequently find ways to support lab partners who offer resources and information to their patients.
The program’s success has highlighted that developing programs with a patient-first approach is essential to reach patients and positively affect patient outcomes. The maternal health wellness program allowed patients to choose their level of involvement. Simple but effective tools ranging from offering an easy way to opt-out of the program to taking an omni-channel approach to delivering content addressing different usability scenarios and learning styles, allowed patients to determine if the given information is relevant to their health and how to make use of this information.
ONC Conference
“Make sure the patient has a seat at the table” – Shally Madan, COO, Luminate Health.
Shally Madan, COO of Luminate Health participated in the 2023 ONC Annual Meeting at a panel discussion on “Improving Patient Access to Health Information with Patients as Partners.” The panel brought together key stakeholders from the Alabama Life Research Institute at the University of Alabama, Vanderbilt University and Datavant to discuss issues such as health literacy, defining the meaning of access for patients, identifying gaps in the information delivered to patients, health advocacy, and interoperability issues.
Hearing perspectives from each organization serving diverse patient populations highlighted the need for patient access solutions that adapt to meet the distinct needs and preferences of each patient demographic. Recognizing and respecting these differences across patient populations fosters inclusivity and ensures that healthcare services are delivered in a manner that resonates with individuals from various backgrounds, promoting greater accessibility and delivery of care. Embracing this approach advances the journey towards true patient-centric healthcare, where every patient feels understood, valued, and empowered in their healthcare decisions and experiences. This also encourages digital health companies and healthcare organizations to think more empathetically and holistically about how to provide patients with the elements needed to take agency over their health care.
“We should continue to empower patients to take an active role in managing their health by providing them with relevant information and tools” – Amy Nichols, Vice President of Customer Applications and Analytics, PathGroup.
Where do we go from here?
Ultimately, the maternal health project is a gateway for future projects that can apply to a spectrum of other conditions and disease states. The teams at PathGroup and Luminate Health hope to apply the same program structure and best practices to a variety of conditions in the hope of positively impacting more patients across different populations. Wellness programs can be built around other conditions such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease, or thyroid function.
Targeted wellness programs can function as a foundation for closing gaps in health equity. Studies show that conditions and disease states vary across the population based on race and ethnicity, illuminating that some populations are disproportionately disadvantaged in their access to good care. The National Institute of Health released a report in 2023 highlighting that maternal mortality rates are higher among American Indian, Alaskan Native, and Black populations than in other populations. Data gathered from maternal health wellness programs could help support these metrics, emphasizing the importance of resources, care, and treatment of these specific pregnant patients.
Going forward, healthcare organizations and digital health companies can do more to ensure that wellness programs and other similar initiatives are reaching patients in an equitable way, hopefully moving one step closer to properly addressing gaps in care for the most underserved populations.
About Luminate Health:
Luminate Health is the leading patient engagement and analytics company for the diagnostics market. Luminate works with commercial and hospital labs across the country to unlock the value of lab data to patients, providers, and other key stakeholders in the healthcare industry.
Today, millions of patients use the Luminate platform to access, manage, and understand their lab results. Our integrated approach closes gaps in care and allows our partners to stay connected with their patients through their healthcare journey.
Together with our lab partners, we’re advancing patient care and disease management through lab results.
For more information, visit luminatehealth.com
About PathGroup:
Founded in 1965, PathGroup is a premier provider of anatomic, clinical, molecular, and digital pathology services in the United States. Privately held and physician-centric, PathGroup works seamlessly with customers to provide superior diagnostic services – a vital link in the cycle of patient relationships.
PathGroup uses the latest in proprietary and industry-standard technology to deliver fast, accurate results. The company provides clients with the highest quality of services available, consistently exceeding the expectations of physicians, employees, payers, and most importantly, patients. One Lab; Total Service.
For more information, visit pathgroup.com.
