Regions Hospital Becomes First Level-1 Academic Trauma Center to Collect Patient-Reported Outcomes 100% Out-of-Clinic

Celebrating a New Partnership with Regions Hospital Orthopaedic Trauma Center

CODE is proud to announce the partnership with Regions Hospital Orthopaedic Trauma Center. Regions, based in St. Paul, Minnesota will be the first Level-1 Academic Trauma Center to adopt an out-of-clinic model for collecting patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Full press release follows, originally posted on GLOBE NEWSWIRE.

ST. PAUL, Minn., (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Regions Hospital, Orthopaedic Trauma department, is the first Level 1 Academic Trauma center to invest in the infrastructure to scale their patient-reported outcomes program out-of-clinic. Regions will be partnering with CODE Technology, a patient-reported outcomes (PROs) platform that collects PROs as a service.

Led by Dr. Peter Cole, Chief of Orthopaedics at Regions Hospital, and Professor at the University of Minnesota, Regions operates one of the busiest academic centers in the country. The Regions Hospital Orthopaedic Trauma Team has solidified the institution’s status as a hospital that provides innovative, high-quality patient care while at the same time educating residents and fellows while consistently conducting world-class research. “HealthPartners and the University of Minnesota have built an axis of care which has provided the foundation for an unprecedented opportunity which this Orthopaedic Trauma Team has taken advantage of for the sake of advancing medicine at this bastion-institution known for trauma care,” explains Cole.

With the launch of the PRO program, Regions Orthopaedic Trauma and the University of Minnesota are leveraging their shared mission of value-based care to support a new program called: The Value Initiative. The goal of The Value Initiative is to develop and implement value-based healthcare through research, innovation, policy and technology.

One of the first department-wide studies, The Value Initiative, will be leveraging PRO data for patient-level value diagnosis. Dr. Brian Cunningham, Orthopaedic Trauma Surgeon and Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota stated, “We want to find out the value of the Orthopaedic care we are providing and what we can do to improve it. The value equation from Dr. Porter says that reducing cost only improves value if outcomes are at least maintained. Improving outcomes has to be done while evaluating the cost of the episode of care. Our goal is to do both, improve outcomes and lower cost by identifying providers and techniques that are bending the curve while producing outcomes that are at a minimum one standard deviation above the average. We just published a pilot study looking at patient-level value analysis in patients with surgically treated ankle fractures. The biggest limitation was collecting patient-reported outcomes. CODE Technology fixes this problem.”

For the past five years, PROs at Regions Hospital have been collected in-clinic, on pen and paper, using hospital staff. Mary Olson, Vice President of Business Development for CODE Technology said, “The collaboration with CODE will transfer all the effort and time it takes to collect PRO data to CODE. Instead of chasing down patients to take a survey, Regions Hospital’s clinicians and research staff will be freed up to do what they are best at, namely analyzing the data, designing future studies, and providing the best care to patients.”

About Regions Hospital

Regions Hospital, located in St. Paul, Minnesota, is part of the HealthPartners system. The Orthopaedic Trauma department is an academic center at Regions Hospital, run as a collaborative effort between HealthPartners and The University of Minnesota. As a Level 1 Adult and Pediatric Trauma Center, Regions handles any illness or injury, from minor to the most complex. To learn more, visit: https://www.healthpartners.com/care/hospitals/regions/