Mimi Collins
Chief Executive Officer, Longstreet Clinic
Providing patient-focused care has been the goal of Longstreet Clinic since its founding in 1995. But the independent, physician-owned group, which has grown to include more than 200 providers across 20 specialties, knew it needed to refine the care delivery system early on to realize its goals. Over time, Longstreet Clinic embraced a population health approach and value-based care models as powerful tools for the practice and its patients.
Longstreet Clinic explored several care delivery models and payer structures that could help address patient needs. A value-based care delivery system was the answer. Now, most care at Longstreet Clinic is delivered through some type of value-based arrangement. And through the value-based contracts, their patients, providers, and the population as a whole benefit.
A core part of Longstreet Clinic’s mission is to provide quality care to the communities they serve. It’s that strong community connection that drives all staff, administrative and clinical, to work hard to provide the very best outcomes for each patient. “It was never difficult to get our physicians to buy into value-based care because it’s what they believe in and why they do what they do,” said Mimi Collins, Longstreet Clinic’s CEO for more than 25 years.
To further its mission to provide quality care and improve the health of its community, Longstreet made the strategic decision to collaborate with Northeast Georgia Health System under the Health Partners Network (HP2). A wholly owned subsidiary of Northeast Georgia Health System, HP2 is a clinically integrated network comprised of Longstreet Clinic, Northeast Georgia Physicians Group, and other community providers. And since 2019, Northeast Georgia Health System has partnered with Lumeris to further their value-based care goals, a partnership that now also extends to Longstreet Clinic. These value-based care goals include using data to inform clinical care, improve outcomes and solve business and clinical issues.
For instance, the cost of care for a certain patient segment at Longstreet was higher due to frequent visits to the Emergency Department (ED). Dr. Marti Gibbs, a Family Medicine Physician at Longstreet Clinic and Co-Chair of the HP2 Board, said, “when we dug into the data, we found that many of these patients didn’t have transportation to come into the office, which delayed their care, resulting in an ED visit.” Armed with this knowledge, care managers can now be more proactive and help arrange transportation, perform follow-up calls, dispatch a nurse practitioner through Longstreet’s House Calls program, and more. As a result, patient outcomes improved, and costs went down.
Today Longstreet Clinic together with the other HP2 provider partners can confidently bring financial and clinical data to the table simultaneously to analyze trends and identify areas of opportunity. With this sophisticated capability, Longstreet can learn how to marry the two data sets to improve key performance metrics—resulting in better care, improved patient outcomes, greater patient satisfaction, and an overall enhanced patient experience.
About Longstreet Clinic
Longstreet Clinic is a primary care and multi-specialty practice devoted to providing high quality medical care at convenient locations across northeast Georgia. Through a fully-integrated, multi-disciplinary approach, Longstreet Clinic ensures the most appropriate and cost-effective services are delivered in a caring and compassionate manner. Visit longstreetclinic.com for more information about our more than 200 providers, 20 specialties and 9 locations.
About Northeast Georgia Health System
Northeast Georgia Health System (NGHS) is a non-profit on a mission of improving the health of our community in all we do. Our team cares for more than 1 million people across the region through four hospitals and a variety of outpatient locations. Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC) has campuses in Gainesville, Braselton, Winder and Dahlonega – with a total of more than 750 beds and more than 1,200 medical staff members representing more than 60 specialties. Learn more at www.nghs.com.
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