Heart patients will soon benefit from an expanded relationship between Intermountain Health, one of the nation’s premier not-for-profit health systems, and Story Health, a digital health company transforming specialty care delivery. The partnership will increase access to nationally-recognized cardiology patient care across the Intermountain health system.
Intermountain and Story Health launched an initial pilot program in January 2023. The expansion builds on its success.
Heart failure is an increasingly prevalent and costly condition that is expected to grow by more than 25% by 2030, with a price tag that is expected to eclipse the $30 billion mark.
Despite enormous challenges, studies clearly show the management of medical therapies for these patients can significantly reduce morbidity, reduce hospitalizations, and improve quality of life.
Specifically, getting patients on optimized medication, known as guideline directed medical therapy (GDMT), has been shown to increase life expectancy of heart failure patients up to five years and can reduce hospitalizations by more than 70%.
Using Story Health’s program, which utilizes a virtual and asynchronous care model, Intermountain Health patients enrolled in the pilot program experienced a significant clinical improvement, including an increase in achieving medication optimization (GDMT) – with 80% of those medication changes handled without a clinic visit.
Additionally, there was a very low readmission rate over the course of the program (14.5% vs. 18% national average).
Results from the implementation included:
- High engagement levels with patients recommending the experience, as evidenced by a seven-day engagement rate of 91% and an 86 net promoter score (NPS).
- Significant improvement in quality-of-life scores, as measured by KCCQ surveys.
- 20% of patients experienced recovery of heart function.
- The program was able to free up an average of three clinic appointment slots for every enrolled patient, which increased access and improved overall clinic efficiency.
Together, Intermountain and Story Health demonstrated that they could deliver better patient outcomes – a key insight that both proves the value of expanding the relationship and provides a blueprint for how other complex conditions may be treated in the future.
“Intermountain has long been a leader in developing innovative models of care for treating complex patient populations. However, we need to continue to close remaining gaps in care to truly deliver best-in-class cardiology care,” said Kaley Graham, executive director of Intermountain Health’s award-winning heart and vascular clinical program. “After demonstrating successful results during our pilot program, we are confident Story Health complements and enhances the work we do in the clinic to support cardiac conditions in the outpatient setting.”
In addition to the expansion of the heart failure program, the Intermountain and Story Health partnership has expanded to include patients with hypertension.
Launched in April 2024, the hypertension pilot aims to improve the number of Intermountain hypertension patients achieving controlled blood pressure levels.
“Health systems often face challenges achieving optimal treatment plans for cardiology patients because of the reliance on frequent clinic visits. The math doesn’t work for the patients or the clinics – clinics only have so many appointment slots available, and frequent visits aren’t possible for many patients, especially those experiencing social barriers or in rural locations,” said Tom Stanis, CEO and co-founder of Story Health. “Intermountain’s wide reach and diversity of care settings provides the perfect test case to show that, when working together, we can execute a program that drives material patient impacts and improves clinic efficiency.”
Intermountain and Story Health are both committed to clinical excellence and efficiency and are planning to continue measuring the results of the expanded collaboration over time. Intermountain presented a poster with the results from the pilot heart failure program at the ACC CV Summit held in Washington, DC in February 2024, earning a Top Ten poster designation.
About Story Health
Story Health is a healthcare technology company that is re-imagining complex care management, virtual care delivery, and patient navigation. With a technology-enabled and human-powered approach, Story Health is on a mission to transform each patient’s care journey by enabling clinicians and institutions to implement and scale continuous specialty care delivery to every patient with heart disease, leaving no patient behind. Story Health works with many of the most prestigious health systems across the country, including ChristianaCare, Intermountain Health and West Virginia University in addition to many leading at-risk providers. For more information, please visit StoryHealth.com.
About Intermountain Health
Headquartered in Utah with locations in six states and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Health is a nonprofit system of 34 hospitals, 400 clinics, medical groups with some 4,600 employed physicians and advanced care providers, a health plans division called Select Health with more than one million members, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs. For more information or updates, see https://intermountainhealthcare.org/news.
