Wyoming Department of Health + Syllable

Summary of Success

Empowering healthy pregnancies

Led by Medical Director Dr. James Bush and Program Director Sarah Hoffdahl, Wyoming Department of Health partnered with Syllable in an effort to improve health outcomes. During a pro-bono engagement, the teams collaborated to identify a Medicaid recipient patient population that could benefit from additional information about available resources and health support. Using social determinants of health (SDOH) monitoring, the focus of the initiative was to support pregnant mothers to overcome obstacles such as transportation, food insecurities, and other potential SDOH risks to healthy women delivering healthy babies.

Syllable and Wyoming Medicaid jointly reached out to qualified individuals to invite them to join the program, called Juno, named for the Roman goddess of marriages and childbirth. Those who opted into an SMS campaign were sent surveys and wellness tips, aiming to promote healthy pregnancies. A secondary objective of the pilot was to gain insights for  best practices and approaches to effectively engage with participants.

The Challenge

Identifying high-risk pregnancies for engagement

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood. ACEs can include violence, abuse, and growing up in a family with mental health or substance use problems. Wyoming Medicaid estimates that the excess healthcare spend as a result of ACEs is potentially $2 million.

After reviewing 5 months of data (01/01/2020-05/31/2020), Wyoming Medicaid identified over 800 women with high risk pregnancies. The team found that nearly 30% of those women went on to experience severe maternal morbidity and mental health conditions which resulted in excess deaths, drug overdoses, and episodes of subpar care delivery.

The goal of the pilot was to provide a mechanism to intervene earlier in high risk pregnancies, to mitigate and resolve SDOH needs (housing, food, and other insecurities), and escalate positive screenings to Wyoming Medicaid's clinical care management program staff in the WYhealth Program for telephonic follow up.

The Solution

Proactive identification and outreach

With the goal of reducing morbidity, Wyoming Medicaid partnered with Syllable to increase communication flow between participants and the State to advise them of available resources and to proactively reach out to pregnant women identified as high-risk, survey them (i.e., PHQ2, ACE and SDOH) to see if they need additional support, and if so, have registered nurse care managers reach out.

The Process

SMS-powered access to resources

For one year, Wyoming Medicaid leveraged Syllable’s outbound-SMS solution to engage pregnant participants identified as high risk. Together, Wyoming Medicaid and Syllable set up the following experience to help navigate participants through the program and provide access to additional health and wellness resources.

The Results

Unlocking insights for patient engagement

Throughout the engagement, Syllable and Wyoming Medicaid monitored results and jointly iterated on messaging and user interface to continue improving participants’ experience and perception of the program. Wyoming and Syllable’s partnership to help identify and refer high-risk pregnant women for support was just one example of leveraging technology to improve patient access to available resources. The teams learned best practices in engaging with difficult-to-reach populations who are challenged by life’s economic, social, and/or health complications.