For Paradigm, Strong Clinical Relationships Are Essential to Positive Patient Outcomes
As an industry leader in outcome-driven care for catastrophically injured workers, Paradigm relies on its extensive clinical expertise and more than 30 years of proprietary case management data.
These fundamentals enable Paradigm to effectively partner with top clinical organizations to help advance the delivery of better outcomes for patients. By participating and investing in these partnerships, Paradigm not only benefits from a stronger resource and knowledge base, but also shares information that helps patients around the world.
Paradigm’s Chief Medical Officer, Michael Choo, MD, exemplifies these values through his active involvement in research and relationship-building with leading organizations in a broad range of fields.
“There’s a difference between taking the information that’s already out there, digesting it, and creating a business model, versus dedicating ourselves to being an active participant,” explained Dr. Choo.
Paradigm’s Catastrophic Care Management division CEO, Kevin Turner, also shares this philosophy: “In developing new insights and sharing them throughout the medical field, we can help everyone do better and ultimately arrive at improved patient outcomes.”
Partnering with Mayo Clinic to Improve Outcomes in Limb Loss and Preservation
Limb loss and amputation has become a growing concern in recent years.
In addition to traumatic injury and military-related causes, there has been an increase due to medical conditions like diabetes, vascular disease and sepsis. In response to this, in 2018, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense partnered to initiate a five-year project known as the Limb Loss and Preservation Registry (LLPR).
The purpose of the LLPR is to create a comprehensive data repository that will track clinical data, care interventions and outcomes related to limb salvage, limb preservation and amputation care.
Due to the organization’s standing as an industry leader and its depth of resources, the Mayo Clinic was deemed the right fit to manage this critical initiative.
As part of a team that includes hospital providers, post-acute care providers, prosthetic manufacturers and associations like the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Paradigm has become a key contributor to the LLPR due to its unique standing in the field.
Mayo Clinic researcher Kenton R. Kaufman, PhD, a giant in the industry due to his expertise in the areas of limb preservation and salvage research, reached out to Paradigm when looking for advisors.
Since a significant part of Paradigm’s care population receives amputation management following traumatic injuries, there was already a wealth of clinical, care outcomes and utilization data that could benefit this initiative—and Dr. Kaufman was looking to leverage Paradigm’s expertise. As an organization that is dedicated to guaranteed outcomes, while also acting as a payor for these cases, Dr. Kaufman believed Paradigm’s highly relevant collection of data would function as a microcosm for the initiative.
Making the LLPR as robust as possible also strengthens Paradigm’s ability to help injured workers dealing with amputation, limb loss and limb preservation. Dr. Choo added, “I was very excited about the registry incorporating cases from all across the country. This means we’ll be able to compare what we have to a larger set of data for benchmarking.”
Advancing the State of Rehabilitative Medicine
Another of Paradigm’s key partnerships is with the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM).
With a 95-plus-year history, the ACRM is one of the largest and fastest-growing international professional associations in the rehabilitation field.
The organization comprises physicians, researchers, therapists and many other types of stakeholders committed to advancing the rehabilitation medicine industry and enhancing the lives of people with disabling conditions.
Paradigm’s involvement was initiated because many of its rehabilitation providers are ACRM members. As a frequent ACRM conference presenter, Dr. Choo made important connections with providers and researchers in this institution and began to see a key opportunity.
“Like most health care fields, rehabilitation medicine has large variations with care approaches,” explained Dr. Choo. “One of the things I and other stakeholders always felt we needed in the field of rehabilitation was a unified set of evidence-supported best practices and clinical guidelines that can be shared across the industry.”
The ultimate result of this has been a triumvirate partnership between Paradigm, the ACRM and the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF), an international accrediting body.
The goal of this initiative is to sponsor, promote, publish and disseminate clinical guidelines and best practices for the entire field of rehabilitation medicine.
In addition to Paradigm’s role in funding important research, Dr. Choo serves as the chair of the organization’s Policy and Dissemination Subcommittee within its Evidence Practice Committee (EPC).
Paradigm has supported the development efforts for the minimum competency criteria and recommendations for disorders of consciousness centers, which will soon be disseminated across the industry. Taking the lead in these types of initiatives also benefits Paradigm as an organization, enabling it to gain firsthand access to leading research that the organization can incorporate into position papers, guidelines and best practices.
Working with National Leaders in the Field of Burn Injury
Burn injuries represent some of the most severe and complex cases Paradigm encounters.
In his role as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Choo has very quickly developed an intense interest in burn model systems, which focus on tracking progress and creating benchmarks for outpatient experience.
“We have brain injury model systems, we have spinal injury model systems, but burn injury model systems are not as well known,” he said.
As one of the four burn model systems funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, the Boston-Harvard Burn Injury Model System (BHBIMS) is dedicated to improving the lives of burn survivors. Similar to the LLPR, one of its primary directives is to collect data on patients across the country to create a better picture of what typically happens to these individuals over the long term.
As an advisory member of this organization, Dr. Choo helps further its mission, while also connecting Paradigm’s burn injury patients with this larger community.
This is an incredible resource that Paradigm has been able to tap into. Although they have some of this data within their own system, it is limited from a long-term perspective due to the return of Paradigm’s injured worker cases to its clients following successful outcome achievements.
One of the biggest advantages for Paradigm’s patients is that by gaining access to the BHBIMS tool, they also access a larger support system that helps them better understand their injury and long-term prospects.
Positive Feedback Loops that Ultimately Benefit Injured Workers
Through these and other partnerships, Dr. Choo and the clinical leaders at Paradigm are working to not only expand the organization’s access to the latest clinical research and practices but also to strengthen the state of the health care industry.
As Turner put it, “I really think we have a high level of obligation and accountability to the field we’re in. We want to be a member that participates with the research and plays an active role in actually making the industry better.”
Above all, however, everyone at Paradigm agrees that the overriding priority is on improving the lives of catastrophically injured workers.
Dr. Choo believes that all the time and effort spent building these relationships ultimately benefits the patients: “It’s really been my passion and drive to get involved with clinical partnerships, because I strongly feel such collaborations can actually make a difference in the ultimate outcomes associated with catastrophic conditions and injuries that we’re entrusted by our clients to manage.”