LSU Health Care Services Division

The LSU Health Care Services Division (LSU HCSD) uses structured disease management and population health programs to systematically improve health outcomes for its medical home clinic patient population.

Inaugurated more than a decade ago, the first LSU HCSD disease management programs addressed adult diabetes, asthma, heart failure and HIV, as well as screening rates for breast, cervical and prostate cancer. More recently, LSU HCSD added programs for chronic kidney disease, hypertension, smoking cessation and weight management. These programs expand the effort to include not only management of chronic disease, but also wellness and risk factor modification.

Program Support

To strengthen these programs, LSU HCSD established a comprehensive support infrastructure. An LSU HCSD Health Care Effectiveness Team works under the direction of the chief medical officer to create and maintain this infrastructure, which comprises: 

            • evidence-based guidelines 
            • development of health information technology to support the programs 
            • measurement systems to assess results 
            • creation of patient education materials 
            • system-wide clinical coordination

Each program has a system-wide clinical lead – an expert clinician who oversees the program’s implementation, works to adapt national guidelines to the LSU HCSD system and assists each LSU HCSD site in identifying improvement opportunities. The clinical lead also identifies important processes and outcomes to monitor, then develops corresponding measures to track and indentify improvement opportunities.

Innovative “Spiral” Management

Most importantly, all programs are supported by a common management and operational structure, which LSU HCSD refers to as its annual disease management “spiral” (see link below).

The spiral involves a series of four quarterly meetings designed to bring together knowledge experts who develop guidelines and establish excellence criteria. At the winter meeting, which also serves as an annual conference, awards for excellence based on measured performance are presented to qualifying sites within each disease management area.

In addition, the spiral includes quarterly Operational Review meetings that occur at each of the seven LSU HCSD hospitals and clinics. During these meetings, the hospital’s management reviews its progress in improving processes and outcomes. The spiral also calls for visits by the clinical leads to each LSU HCSD site, allowing the clinical lead to help identify and implement improvement projects.

This spiral management approach has been in place for more than a decade and has generated significant improvement in the process and outcome measures monitored by the various disease management and population health programs.

In 2010, all seven LSU HCSD hospitals received Hospital Quality awards from eQHealth Solutions, with Bogalusa Medical Center receiving the Platinum Level award and University Medical Center in Lafayette receiving the Gold Level award.

Click here to view the spiral and the original article from which this feature was adapted.

For more information about this program, please contact:
Michael Kaiser, MD
Chief Medical Officer, LSU Health Care Services Division
[email protected]