The National Osteoporosis Foundation www.nof.org and CECity www.cecity.com have launched Ostonics Quality Systems LLC, a joint venture to deliver the ProteQt FLS™ solution, www.OStonics.com. ProteQt FLS is a cloud-based solution for implementing and managing a Fracture Liaison Service (FLS) to be used in health systems and healthcare practices.
Currently, in the U.S, less than 30 percent of women age 65-85 are tested and/or treated for osteoporosis after breaking a bone. This lack of commitment to prevent fractures is a major failing of the U.S. healthcare system and leads to increased healthcare expenditures, morbidity, and mortality. The number of bone breaks per year caused by osteoporosis exceeds the incidence of heart attacks, strokes, and breast cancer combined.
FLS is a coordinated preventive care model which operates under the supervision of bone health specialists and collaborates with the patient’s primary care physician. Post-fracture care is managed through a FLS coordinator who ensures that individuals who fracture receive appropriate diagnosis, treatment, and support. Patients with recent fractures are tracked via a population registry and timelines are established for patient assessment and follow-up.
FLS programs have been successful in a number of closed and open settings both in the U.S and abroad. These programs have greatly reduced the number of costly and serious recurrent fractures by identifying and appropriately treating post fracture patients, since this group has the highest risk of future fractures.
ProteQt FLS provides a cloud-based portal to manage patients, performance, and quality. The portal includes a patient registry, task tracker, quality measure dashboard, big data analytics, quality improvement tools, and care coordination within a secure social network regardless of institution.
“Measuring performance can be a powerful and transformative process in the osteoporosis field, but only if physicians and health plans have access to standard dashboards that objectively reflect how they compare against meaningful quality measures,” said Debbie Zeldow, Chief Business Officer at Ostonics. “Our goal is to make this service broadly available so that we can rapidly improve measurement and care for osteoporosis who fracture a bone.”