Optimizing Patient Care Through Our Next Generation of Health Professionals: The Interprofessional Student Hotspotting Learning Collaborative

Our current healthcare system fails complex patients. Healthcare Hotspotting is the identification and engagement of the highest utilizing, most expensive patients, whose unmet complex health and social needs land them repeatedly in emergency rooms and hospitals. Coined ‘Super-utilizers’, these individuals receive services that are often ineffective. Student Hotspotting, pioneered by the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers in 2014, trains the next generation of health professionals to work in interprofessional teams to connect the most complex patients to patient-centered care management and support that address social determinants of health. Personalized care plans and strong teamwork have been linked to positive complex patient perceptions of care, making an interprofessional team-based approach utilizing high-touch interventions a promising means of improving satisfaction and health outcomes for super-utilizers (Zwarenstein, Goldman, & Reeves, 2009; Institute of Medicine (IOM), 2015).

The Jefferson Student Hotspotting hub includes a cohort of nearly 50 interprofessional healthcare students from seven professions on an urban campus. Under the supervision of interprofessional faculty, clinicians and staff advisors, student teams assist vulnerable patients in setting personal goals, navigating the healthcare system and connecting with community resources. This innovative curriculum aligns well with the Summit’s fourth theme, Integrating Patients and Families in Interprofessional Practice and Education. Students have the opportunity to learn about the lived experience of these individuals - their strengths, challenges, and barriers encountered routinely.

In this lightning talk, preliminary results on the effect of Student Hotspotting on the patient participants’ healthcare outcomes, self-efficacy/confidence, and health-related locus of control will be discussed. Qualitative findings, through freelisting interviews (e.g., Dress, Frasso, Calkins, Curry, Kohler, Schmidt, & Sisti, 2018) conducted at the conclusion of the Hotspotting intervention, will be shared. Methodology and survey tools will be highlighted. This conversation will illuminate the patient perspective of Hotspotting and health care at the end of the intervention.