"Welcome to our company blog. Within these blog posts, we hope to share our insights on clinical quality management, the patient-centered medical home, chronic disease management in primary care, evidence-based medicine, and the use of technology in ambulatory care settings."

- David Morin, CEO and Donald Nease Jr., MD, Chief Medical Officer

The success of a health care software product can be measured in many ways. As such, I'd like to point out two new stories that tell not only how our customers are using our product, but also reflect the ability of Cielo Clinic to impact care in very different care settings.

One

Jean Malouin MD, Assistant Chair, The University of Michigan Health System Department of Family Medicine, recently presented at the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Physicians Group Incentive Program Quarterly Meeting on the University's implementation of a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). In the presentation, she shares their PCMH implementation experiences and illustrates their population management strategies. This, of course, includes many references to their use of Cielo Clinic. I urge you to take a look, it's great educational material on how to implement a medical home and how Cielo can help. Click here to view the presentation from the the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan web site, or click here to download them from this blog entry - /PGIP062009houseahome.pdf

Two

The Joy-Southfield Community Development Corporation runs a free clinic in the City of Detroit staffed by a wonderful group of people truly dedicated to better health care and community activism in the City. Check out their web site to learn more and if you can, please support them!


The free clinic uses Cielo Clinic to manage their patients' screening, prevention and chronic disease management needs. Recently, they completed a study on blood pressure control, hypertension management education and diagnostic profiling among African American women (the full study is described in the link below). Since installing Cielo Clinic (less than a year ago), they've posted some very impressive gains in care quality and the study tells the story! Blood pressure control among hypertensive patients is at 60% (the national goal is 50%). Hypertension management education access increased 143%. Patients with no lab profile is less than 5%. Great numbers, especially with a clinic staffed with volunteers. Much of this success is attributed to Cielo Clinic.

Click here to see their June 2009 Revitalizer Newsletter, which includes an article on the study - /JoySouthfieldRevitalizerJune2009.pdf

Summary

Our customer base consists of free clinics, federally qualified health centers, solo practitioners, group practices, rural providers, integrated health systems and academic health centers. In short, our product is being successfully in almost every conceivable care setting. There's lots of talk these days about usability testing for EHRs, I think the stories above and the breadth of our customer base reinforce what we hear over and over, Cielo fits into virtually any workflow, is simple to use, and drives results.


Dave Morin
CEO and Co-Founder
Cielo MedSolutions LLC

In case you missed it, please take a look at our letter to our colleagues:

Dear Colleagues,

The last few months have been quite busy here at Cielo MedSolutions. We continue to build a dynamic company that provides the very best technology solutions that are cost-effective, easy to implement, drive improvement and fit the needs of ambulatory care providers nationwide.
In parallel with growing our customer base by 450 percent this year, we've also achieved the following notable milestones:

• Cielo Clinic Endorsed by TransforMED - Cielo MedSolutions and TransforMED are now Preferred Business Affiliates. TransforMED -a subsidiary of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP)- provides support to primary care physicians and health systems that want to transform their practices into Patient-Centered Medical Homes. Cielo MedSolutions' customers will have access to TransforMED's practice transformation services, and TransforMED will encourage the use of Cielo Clinic's integrated patient registry, clinical decision support and population management tools by practices implementing a Patient-Centered Medical Home.
  
• Cielo Selected for PQRI Reporting to CMS - Cielo Clinic has been designated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as qualified to submit quality data on behalf of eligible professionals for 2008 PQRI reporting. Providers can now directly upload their quality data to CMS for PQRI reporting using Cielo Clinic.
  
• Cielo Awarded a National Cancer Institute Grant - We have been awarded a grant by the National Cancer Institute to study and design a next-generation chronic disease management system. This solidifies our research and development into the future needs of ambulatory care providers.
  
• Cielo Studying LEAN Principles - Through our partner, Altarum Institute, we are studying and documenting the benefits of LEAN principles in relation to the use of Cielo Clinic. This work is being done at a customer site and the knowledge gleaned from it will translate into additional benefits for all Cielo Clinic users.
  
• Cielo Participating in Innovation Study with Community Health Centers - Our hosting partner, the Michigan Primary Care Association, has been awarded a grant by HRSA to study innovation in the Community Health Center market. Four CHCs will be provided Cielo Clinic with tablet PCs and wireless networks to study disease management through the use of technology.
  
• Cielo Success Story Published Online - One of the latest success stories on Cielo Clinic is featured in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Health Care Innovations Exchange (see http://cts.vresp.com/c/?CieloMedSolutions/6d4251a388/deec28db9b/0e2d81dc0c, keyword "cielo"), an online database of innovations that improve the delivery of care to patients. In this story, you will see how the University of Michigan Health System, Department of Family Medicine, managed thirteen quality measures to high levels of compliance using the product.
  
• Cielo Drives Dramatically Higher Disease Screening Rates - The September 2008 issue of Medical Care, the journal of the American Public Health Association, includes a paper detailing a grant-funded study of using Cielo Clinic to improve colorectal cancer screening rates in twelve practices throughout the state of Michigan. Average screening rates at the beginning of the study were at 41.7 percent. By the end of the study, that rate had jumped to 66.5 percent.
  
• Cielo Supporting Free Clinics - In support of our community, we are engaging with free clinics in the metro-Detroit area to improve care delivery to disparate populations and build a registry of clinical information on the uninsured.
  

In addition to the above achievements, we've also added a host of new functionality and a wealth of additional third-party interfaces to our software-as-a-service product offering. Much of this new functionality is a direct result of our customers' requests. And, we have an aggressive product roadmap and a new group pricing model, both of which we'd be happy to share with you.
Organizations work with us at Cielo MedSolutions not only for of our great technology, but also because of our dedication and our support for the overall success of their quality improvement initiatives. We continue to enhance our solutions by bringing together other technology partners, consultants and best practices to create turnkey solutions for successful pay-for-performance programs, patient-centered medical homes, quality improvement initiatives and clinical integration efforts.

Thank you for being a colleague of Cielo MedSolutions. Please stay tuned as we continue to build a dynamic company focused on the needs of ambulatory care providers. If you haven't had a chance to see Cielo Clinic in the last few months, I urge you to take a fresh look. Simply contact Mike Kleczka at 734-827-1000 x1 or mkleczka@cielomedsolutions.com.

Sincerely,


David J. Morin
CEO
Cielo MedSolutions LLC

This morning I had the great pleasure of listening to a presentation from Charissa Shawcross, NP, of Joy-Southfield Health and Education Center and David Law, PhD, of Joy-Southfield Community Development Corp. Both are deeply involved in a free clinic in Detroit and with free clinics, in general, in Southeast Michigan.

What they presented is really scary. There are 47 million uninsured Americans, a number growing each day.

In Detroit:

• 1 in 4 residents do NOT have health care


• there is 1 primary care provider for every 17,000 residents in Detroit


• sudden infant death rates are two times the national average


• and there's additional depressing statistics if you want them...

The Joy-Southfield Health and Education Center (a free clinic on the west side of Detroit) simply cannot grow fast enough to keep up with demand. There is an 8 week waiting period for new patients (many free clinics in Detroit cannot take ANY new patients) and this only gets worse each month.

The people I have met that support and work in free clinics are relentless, hard-working people that probably work over 70 hours each week to keep them running, funded and staffed.

These people need to be recognized; they are providing an unmeasureable benefit to a population without a voice and in many ways ignored by our politicians.

Running a free clinic isn't glamorous work, it's tough and probably quite stressful.

But I see, in the eyes of these people, a passion and determination that is unselfish and laudable.

The rest of us need to support their work and pay attention to the issues of the uninsured and underinsured because in the end we all end up paying for it in a lot of different ways.

Dave Morin

CEO

Cielo MedSolutions