Oscar Health Patient Pings

University of Pennsylvania

Status: Withdrawn

Conditions: Emergency Room Utilization

Treatments: Behavioral: Patient Ping

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02923024

825856

Details and patient eligibility

About

Oscar spends a significant amount of money every year on high cost high need individuals. With this increase in health care spending, Oscar Health is looking to expand care post emergency room and inpatient utilization for their members. In order to reduce hospital readmissions, reduce emergency room utilization, and increase the overall health of their members, Oscar is investing in a program to bring members better care through increased engagement with their primary care physician.

Full description

Using their existing technology, Oscar is employing a randomized controlled trial among their physicians to improve their engagement and relationships with patients. The goal will be to test and refine patient pings as a provider engagement tool, with an eye toward using it within the broader approach to high-risk patients as well. The Penn team is helping to design the intervention, which includes helping with determining what the three arms will be and randomizing physicians and practice sites. They will implement a three-arm trial with the first arm being usual care (no pings), the second arm being the intervention of information, and the third arm being the intervention of information and financial incentives. In the two intervention groups, providers will be sent patient pings after a patient experiences a trigger event. This trigger event could be an emergency room visit, admission to a hospital, or a hospital discharge event. The patient ping will be sent to the patients doctors including primary care physicians and specialists. If the patient does not have a doctor, a ping will not be sent. In the third arm, physicians will be incentivized to see patients immediately via phone call or in office visit. Physicians will receive an incentive for calling the member within 48 hours of trigger event and will receive a larger financial incentive for seeing the patient for an office visit within 7 days of trigger event. This bonus payment will be paid to physicians uncoupled from usual reimbursement as a separate bonus check to increase salience. No pings will be sent to the physicians for the patients randomized to arm 1: usual care.

Sex: All

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Primary care and specialist physicians under contract with Oscar Health insurance

Exclusion criteria

• Any primary care and specialist physician not under contract with Oscar Health.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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0 participants in 3 patient groups

Usual Care

No Intervention group

Description:

This arm will be usual care and there will be no intervention.

Information

Experimental group

Description:

In this arm, providers will be sent patient pings after a patient experiences a trigger event. The ping will be a fax sent from Oscar to the physician alerting them of an event their patient had.This trigger event could be an emergency room visit, admission to a hospital, or a hospital discharge event. The patient ping will be sent to the patient's doctor including primary care physicians and specialists. If the patient does not have a doctor, a ping will not be sent.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Patient Ping

Information and Financial Incentives

Experimental group

Description:

In this arm, providers will be sent patient pings after a patient experiences a trigger event. The ping will be a fax sent from Oscar to the physician alerting them of an event their patient had.This trigger event could be an emergency room visit, admission to a hospital, or a hospital discharge event. The patient ping will be sent to the patient's doctor including primary care physicians and specialists. If the patient does not have a doctor, a ping will not be sent. Physicians will be incentivized to see patients immediately via phone call or in office visit. Physicians receive a financial incentive for calling the member within 48 hours of trigger event and will receive a larger financial incentive for seeing the patient for an office visit within 7 days of trigger event.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Patient Ping