AAPM&R Drives National Call-to-Action with Long COVID Public Dashboard
The American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (AAPM&R) is an association of physiatrists – physicians who treat a wide variety of medical conditions affecting the brain, spinal cord, nerves, bones, joints, ligaments, muscles, and tendons with a focus on helping people achieve maximal function. Like many associations, AAPM&R wants to be able to:
“I want to transform our organization’s culture so we can become data-driven decision makers,” says Senior Manager of Data, Annette Moy. “I want to better leverage internal and external data and determine how we can bring disparate systems together. Our association management system (AMS) houses more transactional information, while other systems of ours capture more behavioral data. We know this data can offer a richer, deeper understanding – and can even help us predict outcomes – and we want this so we can support our staff and committees in making better decisions.”
The Need for a Long COVID Dashboard
The onset of COVID-19 set the world on its heels and determining long-term impacts has been challenging. Some patients are experiencing post-COVID conditions, also known as long COVID, and physicians are currently working to understand these patients’ long-term symptoms, as well as the long-term impacts for physicians. To understand the potential scope of care required, they needed to first be able to gauge how many people are currently party data at Johns Hopkins and the U.S. Census Bureau, they decided to partner with Association Analytics for help.
AAPM&R had just started working with Association Analytics to implement their data analytics platform, Acumen. However, they knew the A2 team had the ability to access and overlay third-party data so they asked them to help create a dashboard to estimate the scope of the problem. Moy recalls, “We wanted to use third-party data and apply a formula to get estimates of how many people have long COVID, how many are likely to develop long COVID, who is most at-risk and why.”
“We approached Association Analytics and they helped us determine what information would give us the best result. From concept to launch, the dashboard took less than two months to build. Now, we have a tool to help people understand the magnitude of the situation and can use this information to highlight issues moving forward.”
Long COVID Dashboard Delivers Impact and Member Value
AAPM&R is leading a national call to action for Congress to deliver a comprehensive plan to address the needs of long COVID. The launch of the dashboard provided a flurry of press coverage in publications such as the New York Times, Boston Globe, Crain’s Chicago Business, Medpage Today, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News and others that has helped spotlight the issues and establish AAPM&R as healthcare thought leaders. Not only do publications continue to cite the association and its dashboard, but AAPM&R members have been sharing comments like, “This is excellent! and “This is Forward Thinking Rehab!!!” on Twitter.
Forging a Great Partnership
Forging a Great Partnership
While AAPM&R was initially focused on partnering with Association Analytics to glean valuable insights from its data via Acumen, the immediate need for the long COVID dashboard forced both to quickly pivot. When asked how this impacted the relationship with Association Analytics, Moy said, “Working with Association Analytics has been great from the start. Association Analytics’ platform is a hybrid of a data lake and warehouse, so we get the best of both worlds with structure and speed. They’ve been really easy to work with and have a lot of staff knowledgeable in analysis.”
Now, AAPM&R plans to focus on early career physicians and is excited to use Acumen to help understand how to best engage and support recent graduates. “We’re excited to dig into our metrics and compare year-over-year data to maximize our success,” said Moy. “I want to bring our whole staff along on this journey.
We have staff at different levels pulling reports, but Acumen is designed so anyone can use it, and answers to our most frequently asked questions can be easily viewed in the platform.”
“Part of what I really like about Association Analytics is that they’re association focused and have a lot of ideas on how we can best analyze our data to come up with new ideas.”
Annette Moy, Senior Manager of Data, AAPM&RWhether its COVID or anything else, Association Analytics is helping AAPM&R provide support both within and outside
their organization. “Part of what I really like about Association Analytics is that they’re association focused and have a lot of ideas on how we can best analyze our data to come up with new ideas. I also love their discussion boards and that they put on a lot of professional development webinars that are really helpful,” said Moy.
American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
PM&R physicians (physiatrists) are medical doctors who have completed training in the specialty of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R), and may be subspecialty certified in Brain Injury Medicine, Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Neuromuscular Medicine, Pain Medicine, Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine, Spinal Cord Injury Medicine, and/or Sports Medicine. They diagnose and treat pain resulting from an injury, illness or disabling condition and lead a team of medical professionals, which may include physical therapists, occupational therapists, and physician extenders as well as other physicians, which may include primary care physicians, neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, and many others to optimize patient care and maximize function. As the primary medical society for the specialty of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R), AAPM&R leads the advancement of physiatry’s impact throughout healthcare.
