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Advancing Progress and Possibilities for a Healthier Future

Proactive Ochsner Encounters:
A Powerful Tool to Keep People Healthier

What if every interaction and every touchpoint with each person we serve could become an opportunity to keep people healthy and prevent disease?

Maria Carmen Wilson, MD, located at Ochsner Health Center — Covington.

15,000 screenings and immunizations have been scheduled or completed already through this program in its first year alone.

That’s the simple but powerful idea behind Proactive Ochsner Encounters, an initiative that is making a real difference to keep members of our communities healthier while saving lives along the way.

Introduced over the past year in clinics at Ochsner Baptist, Ochsner Medical Center — West Bank Campus, Ochsner St. Anne, Ochsner Medical Center — New Orleans and in the River Region, Proactive Ochsner Encounters engage our entire healthcare team to remind patients — at every step of a visit — to complete overdue immunizations or screenings. The initiative will continue to expand into Baton Rouge and Northshore facilities in 2020.

The program takes proactivity to a new level. Here’s how it works: Beginning at registration with a patient access representative and repeating when the patient is assigned a room with a medical assistant or nurse, during a clinic visit with a physician or advanced practice provider, and even at check-out, every team member is trained to review the medical record and remind patients of overdue screenings or immunizations. Staff members are empowered to schedule the overdue procedures immediately, and in many cases, they’re completed the same day.

Since its launch in October 2018, nearly 15,000 screenings and immunizations have been scheduled or completed through this program. While most of these patients are given peace of mind and a clean bill of health, others discovered cancers and other serious illnesses they may not have otherwise been made aware of.

Early detection is essential to better survival, especially for serious diseases. Since the program’s inception, some eight patients have been diagnosed with breast cancer, three with colorectal cancer, and 29 with abnormal retinopathies, all through routine screenings prompted by Proactive Ochsner Encounters. Delivering life-saving treatment to community residents that they didn’t even know they needed — that’s one more way Ochsner is becoming a system that delivers health.