Asthma Care Plan

Asthma is a chronic condition involving the airways in the lungs. It affects over 20 million people in the United States, causes 1.8 million visits to the Emergency Departments (EDs) per year, and costs $56 billion annually.
The financial burden of ED care for Asthma takes a particularly severe toll on low-income populations both for the patient themselves and the health systems that serve them.

Given that 70% of Medicaid patients possess one or more IoT enabled devices, and an even higher proportion own a mobile phone. Rx.Health worked with St. Barnabas Hospital (SBH) in the Bronx, NY to engage their underserved Asthmatic population with a Digital Asthma Care Plan.

The project was designed to serve four purposes:
1. To inform the SBH Electronic Health Record system of patient language preference
2. To gain monthly patient reported Asthma Control Test (ACT) scores
3. To gather feedback on patient medication adherence
4. To deliver an Asthma Education Module either in English or Spanish

The whole SBH Asthmatic population was targeted in one go using the Rx.Health “Bulk Prescription” feature. Following this clinicians within SBH are continuing to place patients onto the care plan either during or following their face-to-face clinical appointments.

14%

Engagement Rate In 12 Hours

Within 12 hours of the initial message being sent, 14% of patients replied with more replying over the next 48 hours

2.6%

Opt-out rate

Only 2.6% of patients opted out of the Asthma Care Plan, showing that digital engagement can be high when done in the right way

100%

ACT Completion Rate

Every patient that started the ACT survey, completed the ACT survey showing that a 5 question survey isn’t burdensome for patients

Future Direction

Phase two of this project includes complete integration with the SBH EMR allowing for the ACT score to populate the patient records and more precise delivery of education material based on recorded medications.