HJBR Nov/Dec 2023

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  NOV / DEC 2023 15 say that we had 42 goals in this most current business plan. We hit 93% of those goals. We had 234 deliverables; we hit 92.5% of those deliverables. One of the major focuses in that business plan was chronic diseases, and I think that’s where a lot of our health outcomes are the poorest, in addition to maternal mortality and infant mortality that we discussed ear- lier. Looking at things like heart disease pre- vention, we are working with our managed care companies, have a population health cohort through Well-Ahead, that is coach- ing folks through care teams on evidence- based strategies for heart disease preven- tion and management. The cohort provides clinics with practice coaches and popula- tion health registered nurses who help con- nect folks with resources. In 2023, we had four of those new population health cohort sites come online. Something else that’s very big in Louisiana for chronic conditions is, of course, hypertension. What we’ve been trying to spool out now is community-based blood pressure monitoring. We have 15 of those new self-monitored blood pressure sites that we stood up in 2023. Those really are for your folks that have uncontrolled hypertension that may not have a medical home, or they may not be under the direct continued care of a medical provider. Some of this is personal responsibility. Some of it is getting up our provider rates so that more providers participate in Medicaid. We have diabetes prevention, which really transcends Medicaid. We’re work- ing with the CDC, trying to get lifestyle change programs that we can get folks into. We have Louisiana Diabetes Educa- tor Networks where nurses, dieticians, other mid-level practitioners, pharmacists, exer- cise physiologists work collaboratively to move the needle for diabetes. In 2023, we trained 16 new National Diabetes Preven- tion lifestyle coaches. We had four new CDC National Diabetes Prevention program sites. That’s big. What we really need to see an increase in is colorectal cancer screening. This is the second year we really targeted this, because of our high incidents and mortality rates in Louisiana being well above the national average. We really need a push to increase screening, and we are trying to reduce the barriers to get that screening, especially in rural Louisiana and also among African American populations. We’ve been working hard withmanaged care entities and health- care providers. I would definitely want to give a shout-out, for instance, to Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center. They held 60 screen- ing events across the state and screened 803 folks during those events. We brought on two new partners this year — Ochsner Health and Our Lady of the Lake Cancer Center. They’ve been awesome. We’ve been seeing colorectal cancer screening steadily increasing since 2018. We really want to continue moving that needle. That’s just four areas we’re really focused on, including infant mortality and maternal mortality. That is really the low hanging fruit I think we need to go after to get that needle moved quickly. Editor Thank you. We actually ran a large part of the business plan in the January/ February issue. I’m glad to hear that so many were implemented because there were some serious target dates on there. Congratulations. Community-based Blood Pressure Monitoring at Marlo’s Barbershopin New Iberia and Executive Cuts in St. Martinville.