Force Therapeutics Announces the Next Evolution of Its Leading Episodic Care Management Platform

Expansion into bariatrics, along with new platform features, will further allow clinicians to intelligently extend their reach and drive more effective recovery

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Force Therapeutics

Sep 17, 2019, 08:00 ET

NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Force Therapeutics, the leading episode-based digital care platform and research network, today announced the expansion of its platform into the bariatrics market. In addition, the company unveiled several new platform features to further standardize best practices and significantly scale care delivery.

The Force Therapeutics platform leverages video and digital connections to directly engage patients at every step of their journey - from the point that surgery is scheduled to post-operative recovery and beyond. More than 60 orthopedic centers at leading health systems including Northwell Health, University Hospitals, Geisinger Health System, Scripps Health, Northside Hospital and Connecticut Joint Replacement Institute (CJRI) at Saint Francis Hospital have used the Force platform to treat over 125,000 patients, reduce post-acute costs per episode by 32 percent, reduce readmission rates by 28 percent, and publish 45 studies via the Force Research Network.

"The Force platform supports every patient's need throughout their journey, from diagnosis through decision support, preparation for surgery and full recovery. We understand how to use content and connectivity to optimize and engage patients throughout the episode for exceptional outcomes and a superior patient experience," said Bronwyn Spira, CEO and founder, Force Therapeutics. "The orthopedic episode translates perfectly into other procedural episodes including bariatric surgery, where we have worked with leading providers to develop world-class content to support these patients through a vulnerable stage in their lives. We are excited to leverage our learnings from managing over 125,000 orthopedic patients to improve outcomes for patients undergoing bariatric surgery."

Platform expansion into bariatrics care cycle

Today, 40 percent of Americans are considered obese and the estimated annual medical cost of obesity is $147 billion. To address this rising health concern, bariatric surgeries have become an effective intervention to improve the quality of life and health, while significantly reducing costs. However, success lies in managing the episode by engaging the patient throughout their care journey.

To empower clinicians to further extend their reach to bariatric surgical patients, Force Therapeutics will be leveraging its proven episode-based care approach in four key ways:

Pre-op optimization across nutrition education, pre-operative testing and conditioning
Reduced late-stage surgery cancellations via checklists and smart alerts
Post-op education, patient engagement and monitoring through video-based, prescriptive plans of care
Ongoing support and connectivity to care team including FAQs, phased delivery of digital content, and a care coordination message board

"Today, patients have a strong desire to be active participants in their care. We partnered with Force Therapeutics to elevate our patient engagement strategy and deliver prescriptive, episodic care across a variety of orthopedic conditions. To date, our multi-year collaboration has resulted in significantly improved outcomes including a 30 percent reduction in hospital length of stay, 56 percent reduction in skilled nursing facility utilization and an 18 percent reduction in readmissions. Given their proven experience in orthopedic episodic care management, we look forward to seeing their continued success as they expand to bariatrics," said Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA, FACS, Chief Physician Officer and Chair of Musculoskeletal Institute & Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Geisinger Health.

Force Therapeutics' platform expansion into bariatrics is expected to go live in early 2020.

New platform features to significantly scale care delivery

In addition, Force Therapeutics unveiled several new features and content to its episode-based digital care platform:

Enterprise Dashboards: Expanded analytics and reporting capabilities to include several configurable dashboards that enable clinicians and administrators to understand overall case volume, patient engagement and compliance, and patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs) tracking and comparison across multiple teams.
Joint Registry Link: Effective July 1, 2019, the AJRR become the sole pathway for meeting The Joint Commission's Advanced THKR Certification registry requirement. Organizations can now use the Force Therapeutics platform to automatically collect, measure and submit patient-reported outcomes to AJRR while also having access to nationwide AJRR data for benchmarking purposes. This capability can be extended to additional registries as requested.
Virtual Joint Class: Lastly, the Force platform will now include a protocolized pre-operative education class that features interactive content including quizzes and "teach-backs."

"Local and national market forces, including heightened consumerism and the transition to value-based payment, have necessitated transformation in our care delivery. We believe that experience-centric, value-based offerings such as the Force Therapeutics platform are the key to our financial sustainability as well as the best way to fulfill our mission of 'Providing superior health services to the communities we serve.' Their new platform features will enable us to continue scaling care delivery across the entire episode for an exceptional patient experience," said Matt Cantonis, AVP, Accountable Care Organization, Clinical Care Lines at Scripps Health.

PR Contact:
Adrienne Chen
[email protected]

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SOURCE Force Therapeutics