Phytel is a technology company enabling physicians to communicate with their patients at home, and their community-based caregivers such as long term care facilities and home care agencies. It would be a good idea for home care sales and marketing staff to be familiar with what Phytel is up to.
The next time your marketing people enter a physician’s office, they may be asked a new question. “Are you on Phytel?”
Do not be insulted. Phytel is not an illegal substance. It is a company that works with medical groups, primarily in the ambulatory care space, to help them keep patients on track with their plans of care. The company does this by extracting clinical and financial data and analyzing it to find and resolve gaps in care, wherever it may be provided. In addition, it uses an automated telephone system to issue reminders, both of upcoming visits and of medication schedules and diet or exercise plans.
The goal is to help patients improve self-management of their specific health conditions and their overall health. “Once active and engaged, using the right self-management tools, patients tend to follow guidelines more completely and stay with a care plan,” explained Phytel’s Guy Mansueto, VP of Marketing. “This allows the primary physician to manage a more complete population, beyond those who walk in for acute care.”
Mansueto continued to describe the way early adopters are using Phytel products and services. Some physicians, he said, may use “extenders,” which would be nurse practitioners, care coordinators or case managers, to monitor patients using self-management tools and to analyze reports coming from the telephone outreach service.
“When you think about the job description of an ‘extender,’ he continued, “you see that they need to coordinate with whoever the patient’s caregivers are to ensure care remains coordinated. That might be a home care case manager, a long term care facility, a hospice or others.”
The idea behind Phytel is that it enables a physician to manage a full population, in an interactive rather than reactive way, continuously working with specialists, community-based teams such as home care and hospice and others. The company claims CAHPS scores tend to rise for its users as well.
Example of Phytel in use
A tool called “Patient Outreach” automates calling patients who are overdue for a checkup. One Wisconsin physician practice reported adding $1 million in net revenue over a 60-day period by letting the software call patients behind in their care. A Dallas clinic increased visits by existing patients by 11% from one year to the next.
Stories about Phytel have been published in medical technology journals such as Healthcare IT News, Modern Physician and Physicians Practice, but also by USA Today, Forbes.com and The New York Times. Physician adoption may be swift. Home care sales staff familiar with Phytel may find themselves at an advantage.
