Two new studies suggest that a Kaiser Permanente population health management application can help physicians provide better care for a large, diverse panel of patients with diabetes and heart disease. (We're bracing ourselves for a certain anonymous commenter to rant again about how we must be on the Kaiser payroll or something for highlighting this news.)

The app, called the Panel Support Tool, is a web-based tool for primary-care physicians to manage care for individual patients, small groups or entire panels by comparing the care they deliver to nationally recommended best practices. It is integrated with KP HealthConnect, the organization's name for its Epic Systems EMR.

In one study, published online in the American Journal of Managed Care, Kaiser physicians over a three-year period consistently beat national averages for delivering recommended preventive care and produced better outcomes, regardless of whether the patient was healthy or had a chronic disease. "Our study shows that, by using the innovative Panel Support Tool, in conjunction with the electronic medical record, we can provide patients with more of the care they are supposed to receive," Dr. Adrianne Feldstein, senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., and lead author of the AJMC study, says, according to Healthcare IT News.

The second paper, an online exclusive in the journal Population Health Management, found that doctors using the Panel Support Tool produced statistically significant gains in performance against 13 care-recommendation metrics every four months. "Harnessing the power of immediately available and complete patient information, the PST allows primary-care providers to rapidly examine what is recommended for an individual patient, a group of patients with a specific condition, or their entire panel of patients," lead author Yvonne Zhou, Kaiser's senior manager of analytics and evaluation.

To learn more:
- check out this Healthcare IT News story
- read the American Journal of Managed Care paper
- view the Population Health Management study (.pdf)
- see this Kaiser Permanente press release

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