Joyce Komori, BA, BSN, RN, MSN is the Director of Comprehensive Care Coordination for Population Health Management at UCLA. In this role she oversees the outpatient care coordination program and works closely with the ambulatory practices and all the components of the Primary Care Innovation Model (PCIM) to further refine UCLA’s advanced ambulatory approach to coordinated care. She has a background in clinical and administrative leadership from both the outpatient and inpatient settings, most recently directing the daily operations of the outpatient surgical clinics including management of the financial operating budgets, new services strategies, and a hospital opening at the University of California, San Francisco. She has also worked in the community care setting as well, leading clinic operations for a national retail clinic chain. Her academic degrees were obtained at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has also taught as faculty.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), one of the nations’ top-ranked hospitals, has developed an innovative model of comprehensive care coordination to achieve the triple aim. This strategy embeds unlicensed health navigators in physician offices and supports them with a team of licensed professionals that include the physicians, pharmacists, nurses and social workers.
A key element of the model is physician identification and referral of high-risk patients for care coordination. The unlicensed care coordinators are at the center of managing the organization’s accountable populations.
The results have been impressive. The model has decreased ED visits by 20 percent and reduced utilization and total cost per member in the accountable population.
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