Collective Medical Helps Providers Collaborate on Care for High-Risk Infants

Collective initiative empowers care teams nationwide to identify and
make better care decisions for this vulnerable population, which
includes babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome

SALT LAKE CITY–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NAS?src=hash" target="_blank"gt;#NASlt;/agt;–Collective
Medical, delivering the nation’s most effective network for care
collaboration, today announced an initiative to support high-risk
infants, including those struggling with neonatal abstinence syndrome
(NAS). The Collective Platform now empowers care teams to quickly
identify, support and make informed treatment decisions for infants and
children diagnosed with complex conditions, including NAS, in real-time,
at the point of care.

Every 15 minutes a baby is born with NAS. From 2004 to 2014, recorded NAS
births increased fivefold—and these babies are more likely to have
low birthweights and poor respiratory health. In some states, like
Kentucky, the number of NAS cases increased
nearly 200 percent from 2010 to 2016. In some Kentucky hospitals, up to
50 percent of children born are affected by NAS. These infants are twice
as likely as uncomplicated term babies to be readmitted to the hospital
within 30 days of discharge.

“Babies born with high-risk conditions, such as NAS, are terrifyingly
vulnerable,” says Chris Klomp, CEO of Collective Medical. “Even merely
identifying these individuals, as they present with complications in
different healthcare settings, is particularly difficult because they
are often discharged from a hospital after birth without customary
identifying information such as a first name or social security number.”

Klomp continues, “This need carries moral imperative. After working with
caregivers on the front lines–inspiring individuals who are doing
everything in their power to care for these babies, including our
partners at Highlands Regional Medical Center in Kentucky and the
Kentucky Hospital Association—we understand the weight and importance of
this situation. We feel genuinely humbled by, and grateful for, the
opportunity to devote our resources to rolling out a technology-enabled
approach that can meaningfully impact care decisions for these infants
and enable them to live healthy lives.”

“The dramatic rise in NAS is a significant public health problem linked
to the opioid epidemic. Thousands of babies are born each year with
NAS,” says Nancy Galvagni, senior vice president of the Kentucky
Hospital Association. “Collective will be instrumental for our member
hospitals in improving the vital care coordination around these babies
and their families.”

The Collective Platform is a real-time, risk-adjusted event notification
and care collaboration tool fueled by user-generated insights from
emergent, inpatient, post-acute, mental and behavioral, and ambulatory
settings, as well as stakeholders in ACOs and health plans.

The Collective Network is currently implemented across 32 states and is
proven to materially impact the opioid epidemic. For example, Collective
serves as the technical backbone to Washington State’s groundbreaking “ER
is for Emergencies” program. Since the inception of the project,
Washington has seen a 24 percent reduction in opioid prescriptions
coming out of the ED. Similarly, Mat-Su
Regional Medical Center in Palmer, Alaska, utilizes the Collective
Platform in combination with statewide prescribing guidelines. This
combination resulted in a nearly 80 percent reduction in opioid scripts
written between 2015 to 2018 and a 47 percent reduction in opioids given
in the ED.

Collective is endorsed as a best practice for emergency medicine by the
American College of Emergency Physicians and has been recognized by Inc.
Magazine and by the MountainWest Capital Network as one of Utah’s
fastest growing companies.

Learn more about Collective’s impact at www.collectivemedical.com.

ABOUT COLLECTIVE MEDICAL

Collective Medical empowers care teams to improve patient outcomes by
closing the communication gaps that undermine patient care. With a
nationwide network engaged with every national health plan in the
country, hundreds of hospitals and health systems and tens of thousands
of providers, Collective’s system-agnostic platform is trusted by care
teams to identify at-risk and complex patients and facilitate actionable
collaboration to make better care decisions and improve outcomes. Based
in Salt Lake City, Collective is proven to streamline transitions of
care, improve coordination across diverse care teams, and reduce
medically unnecessary hospital admissions. Learn more at www.collectivemedical.com
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and LinkedIn.

Contacts

For Collective Medical
Erin Van Zomeren
Media Relations
(385)
275-6606
erin.vanzomeren@collectivemedical.com