Extending Quality Care Delivery for Catalyst Health Network (Part 2)

Contributors

“We’re working with organizations like Stellus Rx to bring the meaning of healthcare back to us, so we can spend more time with patients and take care of them in the ways they need,” says Catalyst Health Network Board Member Jamison Albracht.

In the second part of Stellus Rx’s interview with Dr. Albracht, he shares his thoughts on the pragmatic, sustainable delivery of team-based care—and the value that’s created for all stakeholders in healthcare.

What can you share with us about how your practice has integrated clinical pharmacists into its care model and the response among Catalyst physicians?

Dr. Albracht: Great question. It’s important to understand this has happened iteratively over the last 10 years. We didn’t boil the ocean and make this happen from day one. Having an aligned partner that wants to get to the same outcomes we do and decrease cost of care in sustainable ways … that has definitely put wind in the sails of our healthcare providers. We’ve all read about how physician burnout has increased in the last decade. That’s because of the way healthcare has been delivered in the fee-for-service model. You see more, do more; you get paid more. And you feel obligated to do that, because of your ever-increasing overhead costs. It’s a vicious cycle that’s churned and burned out our providers.

It’s not sustainable, and we knew this many years ago. So we started in the value-based model to try to disengage from the vicious cycle and put our focus on a virtuous cycle that would enable us to be proactive about what we do for our patients—and especially for high-risk patients.

That represents approximately 7% of my patient panel, but I know them by name and we have a targeted approach for each of them. They communicate with their Stellus Rx pharmacist at least once a month—and between those outreaches, the service they receive from their in-office visits and additional support from the palliative care program as needed, we’ve seen a dramatic decrease in our hospital admission rates.

There’s a rate called ADK. It’s admissions per thousand. It normalizes your patient panel to where you can compare it to anyone else in the nation, as to how often your patients are hospitalized. For our high-risk patients, that ADK number has always sat around 1290 … at least, until the last 8 to 10 months, when we heightened our focus on touchpoints with those patients. Now we’re touching 80% of those patients at least once a month, through one of the three ways I mentioned. And ADK has dropped from 1290 to 890. That’s a 31% reduction.

It’s a huge decrease in pain and suffering, inappropriate utilization, unnecessary costs to medicine. We’re able to do that because of a team-based approach to care that expands the traditional definition of a healthcare team, not because of more hours or more work. We’re working with organizations like Stellus Rx to bring the meaning of healthcare back to us, so we can spend more time with patients and take care of them in the ways they need.

What impact have these efforts made on physician burnout at Catalyst, at least from a directional perspective?

Dr. Albracht: Many of our doctors have told me, “Hey, I was about to check out. I was about to retire.” That’s how overwhelming the burnout was for them. What a huge loss that would have been for our healthcare system. These are physicians with decades of experience, who have the wisdom and the knowledge to do great things for their patients. You can’t replace that provider just by putting in a new provider. It takes time.

Now, with the additional support and a model of care that’s more fully aligned to patient outcomes, they’re saying “I’ve got 5 to 10 more years in me.” That’s extending our workforce and another reason why I believe what we’re doing is healing healthcare by performing in this new model.

We’re supporting the physician in that patient relationship with clinical programs, with data that accurately determines just how sick that patient is and gives you the ability to apply the appropriate, evidence-based resources to those patients. We’re decreasing the cost of care and improving outcomes, quality and life expectancy. Our patient satisfaction scores have never been higher.
And we’re now seeing those physician satisfaction scores come up, too.

When you think about the patients that are best served by Stellus Rx, you talked about the high-risk patients. Can you share a bit more about how you and your teams have introduced this idea of a more high-touch clinical support to them?

Dr. Albracht: When I explain it to patients, I don’t explain it in a way to try to get them to switch their medications to Stellus Rx. I just let them know the clinical support they’re going to get and tell them that my clinical pharmacist is my eyes and ears. I tell them that I only get to see them when they come in for an appointment. But my clinical pharmacist becomes their own personal pharmacist.

They’re in the patients’ records, looking at clinical markers, medications, interactions, lab results. They’re helping me understand how to make patients’ medication regimens most effective for each patient and at the lowest out-of-pocket cost.

Large retail chains aren’t going to do that. They’re not interested in that. And in fact, if I need to get a patient on a new medicine, the Stellus Rx pharmacist will find the most cost-effective medicine. We work as a team.

I tell my patients, “I want you to interact with your pharmacist. You’ll know this pharmacist by name. They’ll know you by name and will stay connected with you to keep me apprised of any changes in your health. There’s no cost to this—we do it because we want to make sure we’re taking the best care of you.” Patients are floored at first, but then they understand it and come to expect it. They recognize that this is all part of a proven model for keeping them as healthy as possible.

That’s the healthcare approach we’ve put together and continue to iterate on … we’re always trying to increase value to patients, to providers, to our staff members, to everyone involved. Everything we do is in the clear best interest of our patients, and Stellus Rx is a crucial part in all of that.

Published: November 4, 2025