As associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs and senior associate dean for population health and primary care at Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport, Dr. E.J. Mayeaux straddles both sides of the joint venture to grow primary care across departments and make population health a reality. “We choose the triple aim approach to healthcare: good patient experience, cost-effective care, and best medicine,” he explains. “We have to avoid duplicating testing, or doing testing that doesn’t produce value for the patient. We have to integrate our work so the patient is always informed and doesn’t fall through the cracks. We have safety nets, so that everything is backed up and taken care of. We look at ourselves as being a medical community that functions well and focuses on taking the best care of our patients.”

Ochsner’s highly tuned version of Epic is a smart, strong system with packages designed for population health. Providers can do analytics on patient data and access data repositories and registries so they can retain information on patients as they move around the state. “The advantage that we’re just now starting to utilize in North Louisiana is the powerful data analysis available to us that we can use to take better care of our patients,” Dr. Mayeaux continues. “Most places that start population health lack information. If you don’t understand your patients and your populations, then there’s only so much you can do. You’re still doing it day-to-day, in real time. With our network, the data collection and analysis is so robust that I can query it to find out who needs my special attention today. It tells me who I need to be proactive on to ensure they’re getting their preventive care. And it’s at my fingertips. Most doctors trying to do this kind of work are saying, ‘One day, we’re going to have that.’ Well, thanks to Ochsner, we have that today.”