Mayo team supports our team

Collaboration between UnityPoint Health - Cedar Rapids and Mayo Clinic started out as a matter of competitive advantage. But over the last year our motivation has matured and changed 180 degrees.

We knew this collaboration would offer a clinical advantage to our patients, but what came as a pleasant additional surprise was the value it brought to our physicians.

In the first month of the collaboration, before even half of our physicians are fully ingrained in the program, we've had 15 eConsults go to Mayo. Satisfaction is high on the patient and local provider sides.

Our first eConsult was in cardiology. One of our senior physicians, Dr. Todd Langager, had a difficult diagnosis. He thought he knew what to do but wanted confirmation before setting his patient and family on a course with serious implications for them all. He gathered his electronic notes, lab test results, the relevant digital images and patient history. Then he sent it electronically to Mayo.

Eighteen hours later he had the eConsult result from a Mayo physician - a world-renowned expert on this disease. The expert confirmed Langager's diagnosis and was on the right track, made additional suggestions and directed him to a 29-page patient education brochure explaining the rare disease. The family was ecstatic. They had a diagnosis. They had confidence that the best minds in the country were dealing with her difficult condition, and they had expert, reliable education materials in their hands within hours to help them.

And that was just the beginning. A local cancer patient who has been receiving care at Mayo for several years asked her Mayo physician if with this program in Cedar Rapids, might she be able to receive her care at home. The physician studied her record, consulted with an independent medical oncologist in Cedar Rapids, and agreed that, yes, she could. So far, Care Network members are seeing that roughly four out of five people who historically may have gone to a Mayo site can be taken care of at home. That's good for us and our patients.

Physicians have access to more than 1,400 care protocols from AskMayoExpert on their desktops, able to pull up the protocol right in the exam room and say, 'Here's how Mayo would treat this.”

Twice already, physicians have queried the AskMayoExpert for information on a condition where there was not a published protocol. Mayo staff called within hours to say, 'We saw that you had an unsuccessful search on AskMayoExpert. What were you looking for?” In those cases Mayo proactively went to its physicians and provided additional information and guidance.

We have wonderful physicians here in Cedar Rapids. We have strong primary care, excellent specialists and we have the University of Iowa just down the road for cases that will need that level of services. Now we have something to add to these resources for our community. This model fits our culture. It's about disseminating knowledge so patients can receive more care closer to home. It's about preserving and honoring local physicians' care and enhancing them versus trying to replace them.

' Ted Townsend is CEO/president of St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids. Comments: townsete@crstlukes.com