Select LHS Program projects

KPWHRI researchers team up with partners from care delivery to present their collaborative work at an LHS Program All Hands event.

Research-care delivery partnerships in action

Developing, testing, and spreading a whole-person approach to managing chronic pain

The LHS Program is leading an Integrated Pain Management Program Pilot that aims to provide safe alternatives to opioids and increase the use of evidence-based, patient-centered non-pharmacologic approaches to chronic pain. Specific program objectives include:

• Designing a scalable primary care-based pain management approach to improve care for people with chronic pain
• Implementing and evaluating the approach in a pilot at a single medical center
• Using findings to spread successful components of the program across Kaiser Permanente Washington
   

Creating value for our members through advanced analytics

Predictive analytics can improve clinical and operational decision making by identifying meaningful patterns in complex electronic health record (EHR) and claims data. The LHS Program brings scientists together with care delivery partners to design and implement predictive models to improve outcomes such as flu vaccination among high-risk members.

During the 2018/19 flu season, and LHS Program team piloted a predictive risk model to identify members who were at high risk for influenza-related complications, followed by outreach to encourage vaccination for these members. This brief, low-cost, targeted intervention was associated with increased vaccine uptake among high-risk patients. Based on these findings, Kaiser Permanente Washington has adopted this intervention systemwide. (See story by KING 5 News, Dec. 2, 2019.)

Through the LHS Program, other predictive models are being developed to:

• Prevent hospitalizations
• Avoid missed appointments
• Promote advanced care planning
• Provide services to members at high risk for suicide attempt

In other advanced analytics work, a team of researchers, data experts, and clinical leaders is using variation analysis to improve quality and affordability by reducing variation and utilization of low-value care. This work is focused on the highest cost, highest burden health conditions across our region.

Improving access and service by optimizing the Community Resource Specialist (CRS) role

Kaiser Permanente Washington's new CRS role has been making a difference for our members since the original pilot study that launched the role several years ago. Across all our primary care clinics, CRSs are available to provide brief health coaching to members and to connect them to community-based resources to help meet social needs around things like housing, transportation, parenting support, and healthy food access. (Learn more in this January 2020 blog post by CRS assistant manager and LHS Partner Cindee DeWitt: Partnering with research, CRS program addresses social needs in primary care.)

Through the LHS Program, implementation scientists at KPWHRI are working with behavioral health experts at Kaiser Permanente Washington to define the core components of the CRS role, support its implementation through practice facilitation and technical assistance, and document best practices and scale-up strategies. 

An LHS Program team is also evaluating the impact of the CRS service on patient and care team outcomes. The goal of the evaluation is to use lessons learned to enhance program effectiveness at scale and to inform ongoing decision-making about the CRS program.

Our evaluation will reach an important milestone in March, with the completion of our member survey. To date, we’ve heard from more than 1,150 members on the initial survey and about 750 on the follow-up survey. Next, our qualitative evaluation team will do interviews with members and primary care teams, including all CRSs systemwide. They'll also launch a provider and staff survey and facilitate discussions with care teams at 4 clinics.

Supporting innovative design in new clinics with a member-centered, data-driven approach

Contact us

For more information about Kaiser Permanente Washington's Learning Health System Program, please email us at KPWALHS@kp.org.