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Vital Decisions, inVentiv team for care management, counseling service

By Chris Thorman

In recognition of the complex medical decisions faced by patients with advanced, chronic illnesses, behavioral counseling company Vital Decision and care management specialist inVentiv Medical Management (iMM) have launched a combined service for payers, providers and seriously ill patients.

The goal of the program is to help patients become more proactively involved in making care decisions and to potentially reduce the use medically inappropriate or unwanted care by people suffering from advanced illnesses.

"As their diseases progress, many patients with advanced illnesses receive care that they do not necessarily want or is medically inappropriate," said Marc Palmer, CEO, iMM. "Often, in a disease as complex as cancer or chronic kidney disease, (the treatments) get momentum and the things just happen. What we have built our products and services around is making sure there is another party who has the expertise to evaluate this on behalf of everybody and make sure the right decisions are being made."

According to Palmer, Vital Decisions' service will be offered in conjunction with its existing case management services beginning in September. Bringing the counseling services of Vital Decisions and its team of psychologists and clinical social workers directly to the patient is intended to help patients understand the treatment options and make their own decisions on how they want to be treated for their terminal illnesses.

"Through this partnership, we expect to bring additional support to a population that has previously experienced significant value from inVentiv Medical Management's Accountable Care Solutions and other clinical support services," said Mitchell Daitz, CEO, Vital Decisions in a press release. "We are committed to improving outcomes by proactively engaging with seriously ill patients and educating them about the options available to them."

But iMM management is clear that the service they provide and the added services via Vital Decisions are not the same as end-of-life care services.

"There is a lot in the media about end-of-life care and this solution is not that – we are not in the position of dictating to anybody what care they should receive," said Roxane Padgett, vice president of marketing and commercialization with inVentiv. "It is really about (the patient) just telling us what (they) want it to be like."

Beyond that, Palmer says the company's technology, which uses data provided to them by claims adjudicators and third-party administrators, allows them to see not only the immediate snapshot of treatments being given to any one patient, but also a longer term view that can help determine which patients, based on their care history may require added attention.

All of this can help both save money and improve the patient's quality of life.

"As we get information we can see things coming. With chronic kidney disease, we want to find people at stage 3," said Palmer. "That's a couple years ahead of dialysis because we have evidence based on our own book of business that we can delay dialysis by about nine months. By that time you can begin to think about where the dialysis should be provided and those are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of savings and a much improved quality of life."