Obesity management is increasingly recognized as a critical component of primary care due to the rising prevalence of obesity and its associated health risks.
According to the CDC, approximately 74% of adults in the United States are considered overweight including nearly 43% of them being considered obese.1 With such statistics, obesity management has become a necessary focus in nearly every sector of healthcare, and particularly for primary care practitioners. This is not surprising since patients turn to their primary care provider as a trusted source and expert when it comes to health issues that require treatment – many of which can be influenced by being overweight or obese.
However, obesity management is complex in nature and requires comprehensive treatment. In fact, effective medical management involves addressing the four main pillars of care as identified by the Obesity Management Association. These include: nutrition therapy, physical activity, behavior modification, and medical interventions.2Whether integrating obesity management into your primary care practice or deciding to specialize exclusively as an obesity medicine specialist, providing comprehensive, effective obesity management can be challenging. It requires coordinated services that best serve you, your practice, and most important, your patients. Ideally, with customizable options and patient monitoring systems that can be streamlined and delivered in one convenient place with built-in metrics for tracking important performance indicators.
Fortunately, there is an all-in-one customizable solution that provides you with everything you need to care for your patients, educate your patients, support your patients, track their progress, securely communicate, and track important patient and practice key performance metrics. It can be used independently or integrated with an existing electronic medical record. Introducing the Core® - a trusted turn-key solution that has been utilized by satisfied obesity medicine specialists for decades.
Streamlined Care for Obesity Management in Your Primary Care Practice
Bottom line, you need tools that support your vision and the care you provide to your patients. When it comes to the pillars for effective weight loss management, the complexity of addressing these aspects necessitates innovative solutions. So, no matter what tools you use, having everything in one place with easy navigation and tracking is essential.
The Core® is designed to address three main components, each supporting comprehensive obesity management. Engaging your patients, automating practice operations, and optimizing patient outcomes and practice efficiency. Below is a more in depth look at how each impact the four pillars of obesity management outlined by the Obesity Medicine Association.
Engage Your Patients
You can engage your patients through interactive education, meal and activity tracking and integration of wearable devices. Engagement with your patients starts as soon as they begin their journey as an interested lead all the way through their weight loss journey. Correlation to the four pillars of obesity management is outlined below:
• Nutrition Therapy: The Core® facilitates patient engagement through a variety of educational resources such as those you have created or entire educational programs you can select. You can provide personalized guidance and meal planning tools and your patients can easily track their intake, activity, and behaviors while your team has everything at their fingertips for effective coaching and counseling.
• Physical Activity: The Core® supports the assignment of physical activity plans and tracking of physical activity that can be shared with you and your team along with API wearable integration.
• Behavior Modification: Effective behavior modification can be facilitated through engagement via The Core® messaging platform, enabling communication between your team and your patients. You can combine this with educational resources and ongoing support for successful habit modification.
• Medical Intervention: The Core® streamlines health record management and outcome measurement, providing you and your team with valuable insights into the effectiveness of medical interventions. You can track all medication prescriptions, inventory as necessary, insurance authorization and so much more.
Automate Practice Operations
While personalized care is essential to address various barriers to weight loss for your patients, automation of workflows, data exchange, and patient communication significantly improves the efficiency of office operations. It also has been shown to improve team and patient satisfaction. Correlation to the four pillars of obesity management is outlined below:
• Nutrition Therapy: Automated workflows streamline nutritional therapy from initial assessments to follow-up consultations. By automating data exchange and documentation, you can devote more time to personalized patient care.
• Physical Activity: The Core® has reminder features that automate patient communication education along with integration with wearable devices so you can easily track physical activity and have everything in one place.
• Behavior Modification: Automated reminders and patient education materials support behavior modification efforts by reinforcing key principles and goal attainment tracking between appointments.
• Medical Intervention: Automated insurance verification, lab orders/results, and medication tracking along with reminders for your team and your patients helps to streamline your medical intervention processes.
Optimize Patient Outcomes and Practice Efficiency
Your goal is optimal long-term patient outcomes and serving those that need your services and products. In order to do this in the most cost-efficient way, you need the knowledge, systems, and technology to make this happen. Correlation to the four pillars of obesity management is outlined below:
• Nutrition Therapy: Advanced analytics provided by the Core® enable you to track patient progress and outcomes, facilitating data-driven decision-making in your nutrition plan. By leveraging insights from uploaded patient data and weight loss metrics, you can refine your treatment and optimize patient care.
• Physical Activity: Integration with wearable devices along with automated patient education and communication makes it easy for you to track the physical activity of your patients. This helps you with your counseling recommendations to improve patient compliance and outcomes.
• Behavior Modification: Interoperability with other software systems and wearable devices allows seamless integration of behavior health tools, optimizing practice efficiency. By centralizing patient data and communication channels, you and your team can coordinate care effectively and easily monitor patient progress.
• Medical Intervention: By tracking key metrics and benchmarking against best practices, you can identify opportunities for advanced care with any recommended medical interventions such as weight loss medication.
If you are looking for a way to easily implement or refine your obesity management program, you want a solution that addresses the diverse needs of patients across the four pillars of comprehensive weight loss and allows you to have everything you need to run your practice effectively at your fingertips. Through its patient engagement, automation, efficiency, and care optimization features, the Core® can help you thrive and differentiate your practice from the many other weight loss options marketed to your patients each and every day. To learn more, visit https://www.pronexinc.com/contact1
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity# https://obesitymedicine.org/about/four-pillars/
About the Author: Karol Clark, MSN, RN, is a best-selling author who has a passion for helping physicians integrate effective, profitable weight loss services and retail sales into their practice while improving patient outcomes and enjoying the journey along the way. Her use of non-traditional (easy to implement) medical marketing strategies, along with her dedication to a positive ROI makes her a uniquely different and sought-after weight loss business consultant. Karol is the CEO of Weight Loss Practice Builder and the exclusive membership program for weight loss practitioners, www.BariatricBusinessAccelerator.com. She has more than 20 years of experience working with surgical and medical weight loss physicians and their teams helping them simplify creation of a profitable and enjoyable bariatric practice.