News 3/7/16

Top News

The International Olympic Committee selects GE Healthcare’s Centricity Practice software as the official EHR for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Centricity was also the EHR of choice for the past two games in London and Sochi; its use in Rio will mark the first time that the software will store the health data of athletes, their family members, and spectators. News like this takes me back to the time my I huddled with my classmates in the school cafeteria to listen to the live broadcast of our hometown’s selection as the site of the 1996 Olympic Games. Six years later I would find myself happily stumbling onto a live performance by Santana in the Olympic Village.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Practice Platinum sponsor Mica Health. The Buford, GA-based company offers EHR data archive services, application EHR solutions, and ambulatory interface solutions; plus ambulatory consulting services for Allscripts, GE, and NextGen users. President Michael Justice’s background includes stints at Allscripts, Community Health Systems, and Miami Children’s Hospital. I’d love to ask him about his pre-healthcare days as a television producer. Thanks to Mica Health for supporting HIStalk Practice.

HIMSS was a whirlwind, and so I’ll spend the next few days catching us all up on relevant news from last week, plus anything that happens to break while many of us attempt to get back into our normal routines. If you’re playing catch up, here are my HIMSS-related recaps:

• Monday, February 29
• Tuesday, March 1
• Wednesday, March 2
• Thursday, March 3

Plus, links to the interviews and guest posts I ran on HIStalk Practice last week:

• Interview: John Jacobsen, MD CMO, Think Whole Person Healthcare
• Readers Write: Achieving Pain-Free Data Security for Physician Practices
• Interview: Jay Compton, CTO, Medicity
• DOCtalk: HIT Rocks … But What Do I Know?

Webinars

March 16 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Looking at the Big Picture for Strategic Communications at Children’s Hospital Colorado.” Sponsored by Spok. Presenters: Andrew Blackmon, CTO, Children’s Hospital Colorado; Hemant Goel, president, Spok. Children’s Hospital Colorado enhanced its care delivery by moving patient requests, critical code communications, on-call scheduling, and secure texting to a single mobile device platform. The hospital’s CTO will describe the results, the lessons learned in creating a big-picture communication strategy that improves workflows, and its plans for the future.

March 22 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Six Communication Best Practices for Reducing Readmissions and Capturing TCM Revenue.” Sponsored by West Healthcare Practice. Presenters: Chuck Hayes, VP of product management, West; Fonda Narke, senior director of healthcare product integration, West Healthcare Practice. Medicare payments for Transition Care Management (TCM) can not only reduce your exposure to hospital readmission penalties and improve patient outcomes, but also provide an important source of revenue in an era of shrinking reimbursements. Attendees will learn about the impacts of readmission penalties on the bottom line, how to estimate potential TCM revenue, as well as discover strategies for balancing automated patient communications with the clinical human touch to optimize clinical, financial, and operational outcomes. Don’t be caught on the sidelines as others close gaps in their 30-day post discharge programs.

Contact Lorre about our post-HIMSS webinar sale.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Rockville Internal Medicine Group (MD) signs on with Privia Medical Group to take advantage of its technology resources, and team-based care and wellness program expertise. PMG is part of Arlington, VA-based PM and population health management company Privia Health.

Announcements and Implementations

The Connecticut State Medical Society-Independent Practice Association signs a five-year agreement with Quality Health Ideas to roll out the company’s CareScreen health data-sharing software to 4,000 physicians across the state.

Compulink Business Systems adds new features to its Orthopaedic Advantage EHR and PM software including single-screen layout and workflow enhancements.

Drchrono adds patient insurance card and credit card capture to its mobile EHR. Company co-founder and COO Daniel Kivatinos stopped by our HIMSS booth to give me a demo. From my perspective, the tool seems to be a timesaver for both patients and physicians.

Social services ministry Lutheran Services Carolinas (NC) selects KaleidaCare’s EHR.

NextGen Healthcare integrates CareSync CCM into NextGen Ambulatory EHR and will offer the product to its customers who want to perform and bill chronic care management services.

National Physician Services partners with Datrium to offer practices “the industry’s first” server-powered hosting solution. As a result of the partnership, Sunnyvale, CA-based Datrium will also become a member of the Perfect Practice Alliance.

ICDLogic will provide American Osteopathic Association members free, year-long educational resources to help them improve ICD-10 coding compliance.

NextGen Healthcare adds InMediata’s InBanking payment reconciliation solution to its PM system, allowing payments to be electronically reconciled against banking deposits.

People

Morehouse School of Medicine names Dominic Mack, MD director of its National Center for Primary Care. Mack, who I have had the pleasure of running into at numerous healthcare IT events over the years, has been a longtime proponent of EHRs and serves as an associate professor at MSM in Atlanta.

Culbert Healthcare Solutions promotes Brad Boyd to president.

Telemedicine

MDLive will migrate its video consult platform to Microsoft Office 365 and Skype for Business during Q2 of this year. The move will eliminate the need for physicians and patients to download and install a video application that runs in the background during consults. The company has also updated its Android mobile app.

American Well adds multiway video capabilities, patient self-scheduling, and a Snapchat-like photo app for physician-to-physician consults.

The local paper covers the launch of CampusRX, a telemedicine company headquartered in Brentwood, TN geared towards college students . Led by Dorsha James, MD Donn Beam, and Corey Carney, the company has leaned on the services of Teladoc and Telamed to power its services. The college student spin seems to be its budget-friendly membership fees and unspecified pharmacy discounts.

Government and Politics

CMS again extends the deadline by which physicians may apply for a hardship exemption from 2015 Meaningful Use requirements. The new deadline is July 1, 2016.

In other CMS news, the agency announces it will hold a second round of applications for its telemedicine-friendly Next Generation ACO model starting January 1. Twenty-one participants were announced in this year’s round of participants, though Pennsylvania-based RiverHealth ACO dropped out because of its inability to meet cost targets.

Other

The Massachusetts Medical Society publishes best practices for physicians who use social media. The 28-page guide offers tips on minimizing legal risk, dealing with online reviews and ratings sites, and managing online reputation. I skimmed through it and found it to be well organized, with tons of easy to understand advice (though I’m a bit miffed it didn’t list HIStalk amongst its screenshots of popular, physician-centric blogs/websites.)

Raymond Tomlinson, “the godfather of email,” passes away of a suspected heart attack at the age of 74. Tomlinson was instrumental in developing an application 40 years ago that allowed messages to be sent back and forth between computers. Along the way, he came up with the idea to use the @ symbol to separate the user’s name from the host’s name. Dare we honor him further with the title of “great-great-godfather of interoperability?”

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic will offer its customers visual analytics from Qlik Sense.

Blog Posts

• #HIMSS16 – Where are we on the journey to value-based care? (Nordic)

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

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Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 3/6/16

XG Health Solutions promotes Mike Bertrand to CTO.

Medecision taps Forward Health Group to populate its Aerial patient risk stratification tool with cleansed and validated data from multiple systems. In other news, the company introduces Aerial for IDNs, comprising bundled payment management and network leakage management tools; as well as performance, patient engagement, and transitions of care tools and services.

ZeOmega launches Jiva for Performance Management to better enable providers to measure and manage performance across multiple populations and payers, and different types of value-based care contracts.

Xerox develops Health Outcomes Solutions, a multi-pronged approach to lifecycle population health management that includes analytics, clinical, technology, and administrative services. The new group of solutions is available to ACOs, hospitals, and IDNs, with expansion to payers coming in the near future.

Aegis Health Group names Ryan Cain (Universal Medical) vice president of business development, Midwest and Andrew Harris (Allergan) vice president of business development, Southeast.

Citra Health Solutions acquires clinical care management services company SironaHealth for an undisclosed sum.  Sirona will maintain its operations in Portland, ME and do business as a Citra Health Solutions company moving forward. Citra reported record-breaking 2015  revenue and sales numbers a few weeks ago, attributing its excess of $72 million in part to partnerships with Allscripts and McKesson.

Berkshire Medical Center (MA) agrees to pilot a new population health management partnership this year between Garmin and Allscripts. Garmin will integrate its Vivofit wearable devices into the FollowMyHealth and CareInMotion platforms, delivering BMC physicians updated, real-time data about patients between visits. BMC CIO Bill Young anticipates seeing improvements in provider workflows, and patient engagement and monitoring.

The State of Tennessee’s Health Care Innovation Initiative selects Altruista Health’s care coordination technology platform and related services. Payers and providers across the state will use the shared platform to identify gaps in care, care planning, care coordination, and other workflow management.

Tribridge delivers its Health360 cloud-based population health management tool via Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM Online software for improved scale across enterprises that include mobile and smart devices.

Brentwood, TN-based Visualize Health integrates Baltimore-based Everseat’s mobile patient-scheduling software into its VHealth quality and value analytics tracking software.

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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HIStalk Practice Interviews John Jacobsen, MD CMO, Think Whole Person Healthcare

John Jacobsen, MD is CMO of Think Whole Person Healthcare in Omaha.

Tell me about yourself and the organization.
I am a board certified family physician. I was a rural banker for 10-plus years before returning to medical school. Prior to joining Think, I was in private practice in rural Nebraska for 10-plus years providing full scope family practice including obstetrics, C-sections, upper and lower endoscopies, minor surgical procedures, ER, and hospital and nursing home work. We provided care from the womb to the grave.

TWPH is a large primary care center focused on patients 55 or older with two or more chronic diseases, which is the highest cost segment of American healthcare. Our goal is to provide 90-plus percent of a patient’s healthcare under one roof in a patient-centered medical home, eliminating the fragmentation that exists today. At the present time, we have 24 PCPs, a palliative care physician, a hospitalist, four physical therapists, a podiatrist, a dentist, a psychiatric APRN, and an optometrist. We have 12 clinical pharmacists who work directly with the physicians and their patients. On our first floor, we have a convenience care clinic for walk-in appointments. We have two digital X-ray suites, a 64-slice CT scanner, 3-D mammography, ultrasound, and a bone density machine. Ninety-five percent of labs ordered are done in our moderately complex lab. In addition, we have three chronic care nurses who are just starting chronic care management. Lastly, we have a fully robotic pharmacy on site as well as a retail area.

I left private practice to join TWPH as I believe primary care is the only segment of the healthcare industry that can truly attain the Triple Aim of improving patient satisfaction, improving patient outcomes over time, and lowering cost. Today, in American healthcare, there are really three players – the healthcare systems, the payers (CMS and commercial insurance), and independent physicians. If you look at how each of these segments attain the Triple Aim, primary care is the only one positioned to do so. Let me explain.

The payers, CMS or an insurance company, can only affect cost. They are unable to improve patient outcomes over time and they cannot improve the patient experience as they are not directly involved in providing medical care. To lower cost, they will require things like pre-authorizations for high-cost medications or procedures, which is a form of rationing.

The healthcare systems argue they can attain the Triple Aim because they are able to control cost better by having vertical integration; however, recent studies have shown the costs actually rise because you eliminate the small amount of competition that does exist in a community when this happens. All the healthcare systems in Omaha have purchased independent primary care offices. They require their PCPs to refer to their specialty services, use their diagnostic services, and admit to their facilities, which leads to not only higher costs but also increased fragmentation for the patient or their caregiver, as these specialists are scattered throughout the community.

What has been found is that PCPs in healthcare systems are disengaged, primarily for two reasons. First, in our current fee-for-service marketplace, the physician has to see a patient every 10 to 15 minutes in order to make a reasonable living. This does not give them the time to listen intently to what the patient is saying nor ask pertinent questions outside the specific symptoms being presented. Secondly, the physicians providing patient care are not the ones making decisions about how this care is given. Most are not involved in evidence-based pathway development, in the selection of the EHR they have to use day to day, or in the structure or management of the employees within their clinic. Essentially, they are ‘told’ what to do and how to do it. Physician disengagement leads to a poorer patient experience and usually poorer outcomes and in turn leads to the patient disengagement. In addition, the costs of imaging or surgical procedures are three to five times higher in a hospital than in free-standing imaging centers or ambulatory surgical centers.

The TWPH model’s initial focus is on the patient experience. We feel that if the patient, which we would rather call our customer, has a good experience, they are more likely to become engaged in their healthcare. It is important to understand patients with chronic disease provide most of their care themselves or through a family caregiver. For example, if the customer comes to the clinic for their diabetes exam, they can have their lab drawn before the appointment so the results can be discussed with them by their physician during their appointment. If they are on multiple meds, the provider can have them visit with a clinical pharmacist who can make sure there are no drug-drug interactions, side effects keeping the individual from taking their medications, and make sure the person can afford the medications prescribed. The customer can get their immunizations, see the podiatrist for their diabetic foot exam, have their diabetic eye exam done and see the dentist all in the same day. If the customer is a female, they could also have their mammography and bone density scan completed as well. If the person is newly diagnosed, diabetic education classes will be provided on site.

We also have a full teaching kitchen available for them to work with a dietician or nutritionist on how to change their diet and cooking habits. With increased patient engagement, you will naturally see improved disease outcomes leading to fewer procedures, fewer ER visits, and fewer hospitalizations. We also have a robotic pharmacy on site which can dispense meds in vials, but also in what we call “pouch packaging.” The clinical pharmacists work hard to synchronize all medications a person gets to come due on the same day of the month to eliminate the customer going to the pharmacy multiple times a month to get refills. Total cost of care for the customer will come down, without ever denying care.

Where is TWPH with Meaningful Use?
Being a startup, we had physicians join TWPH from independent practices as well as hospital systems. These physicians were at different stages of MU before we opened the doors, some having qualified each year where others had not met any of the MU criteria. We have filed for a hardship for 2016 due to the requirements not being published in time for us to meet them.

What EHR and patient portal vendor do you use?
We use Allscripts Professional as our EHR. Allscripts uses a portal called Follow My Health.

Are you working on any other healthcare IT implementations? If so, what timelines have been established? One of our biggest projects at the current time is electronically connecting to other providers in the Omaha community. We are doing this through NeHII, a HIE; however, many practices and facilities do not subscribe to NeHII. We are therefore trying to link directly to these providers and facilities via the direct messaging capability of the EHR. We are also working with a company called Vatica,that has developed a program to simplify the Medicare annual wellness visit in an effort to improve the care of our Medicare beneficiaries. Being an ACO, we are also looking at data analytics, disease registries, etc.

What coordinated care initiatives are currently underway?
As of January 1, we are a MSSP ACO and are awaiting our CMS claims data, which we will begin to analyze. We also have a Total Cost of Care agreement that went into effect on January 1 with Blue Cross Blue Shield Nebraska. We are analyzing the claims data to identify the high-cost users in addition to the gaps in care these patients are experiencing.

We are piloting, with a limited number of our providers, moving patients into CCM using the required annual wellness visit or extended evaluation and management visit. We feel CMS, with the development of CPT 99490, is providing us the opportunity to offer to our customers a broader base of services we could otherwise not afford to provide without this monthly reimbursement. Our model is the epitome of the PCMH concept.

Aside from EHRs, what types of technologies do TWPH physicians use when they interact with patients? Anything particularly “new” like wearables or telemedicine?
Being a startup, we have not implemented wearables or telemedicine. This is on the horizon for 2017. Most of our physicians use scribes. Depending on the provider, the scribe may be in the room with the provider and the customer, or they may be what we call angel scribes, where they are connected to their provider via an encrypted communication line on another floor in the building. They document the visit in real-time. This allows the physician to focus on the customer instead of focusing on the computer in the room. Each of our exam rooms has a big screen TV. The scribe can display lab results or X-ray images on the TV screen, allowing the physician to review them with the customer during the office visit. We soon will be projecting educational videos on these screens..

Are you looking to expand into other states?
The TWPH model is an experiment. To our knowledge, our clinic is the only one of its size and scale in the US that is trying to change not only the culture as to how medicine should be provided within the clinic walls but also trying to change the patient perspective that primary care can provide the bulk of their care within our four walls. Our initial plans are to open two to three more facilities in Omaha and one in Lincoln. Expansion to other states is also on the horizon.

How receptive have patients been to your progressive brand of primary care?
For the most part, our patients, or more often their caregivers, understand and believe in what we are trying to achieve. It has been interesting as some customers feel seeing three, four or five specialists is an honor instead of realizing that having their health deteriorate to the point of needing to see a specialist is a failure of the current healthcare system. We want to instill the belief, not only in our customers but also in all Think providers/employees, that if a person ends up in the ER or in the hospital, we have failed them as their PCP.

We have had many patients comment to their physician regarding the scribes that, “This is the first time you have listened to me in years,” or “I don’t feel like I am competing with your computer for your attention when I come in to see you.”

Our clinical pharmacist share stories weekly about patients who are confused about their medications and are taking them inappropriately. We have had many customers who were not able to afford their medications until the clinical pharmacist reviewed and found out they were all name brand meds with no generics. Pouch packaging and the synchronization of medications has also been well received.

Do you have any final thoughts?
I truly believe our model of treating the whole person is the only way to change how healthcare is delivered in America. By putting the customer first, always trying to improve their experience will improve their engagement in their own healthcare, which over time will lead to lower costs for all. By providing this care in a large-scale primary care center with multiple medical providers present under one roof you, decrease the fragmentation of the way healthcare is currently provided and is, in my opinion, the future of healthcare in America.

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

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Readers Write: Achieving Pain-Free Data Security for Physician Practices

Achieving Pain-Free Data Security for Physician Practices
By Mark Cline

It’s widely accepted – and understandable -  that the primary goal of any healthcare practice is to keep its patients as healthy and safe as possible. But what about keeping their data safe, too?

The CDC estimates that close to 80 percent of office-based physicians use some form of EHR – up from less than 20 percent in 2001. Think of all the personally identifiable information (PII) these electronic documents house – social security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses – not to mention credit card, medical history, and health insurance details.

Despite these confidential records going digital, data security has been shaken off for far too long, and far too often, as a less essential aspect of running a successful and reliable medical office. And the proof is in the breaches.

Last year was a tough year for healthcare. With 65 percent of the data breaches across all industries occurring in the sector, some even called it “the year of the healthcare hack.” Cybercriminals can sell healthcare records for a lot more than credit card data on the black market, so these attacks won’t be stopping any time soon.

While the hackers profit – the affected medical offices lose money. The average cost of a HIPAA-related record breach is more than $200 per patient record, and these costs are borne directly by the owner of the practice. Not to mention that multiple offenses can lead to loss of license and prison.

While HIPAA does not specifically spell out the requirements necessary, it does mandate the need to place safeguards to protect patient health information. These requirements become increasingly complicated as more and more doctors want to offer WiFi to their patients and employees, which is generally no longer seen as a luxury but a necessity.

To many practice owners, data security can seem complex or like just another expense, especially to smaller practices with non-technical staff. In fact, only 33 percent of healthcare organizations agree they have sufficient resources to prevent or quickly detect a data breach. Many think it will never happen to them. But the truth of the matter is that only “The Big Guys” like Anthem, Excellus, and Premera (to name a few) make the breach headlines … precisely why hackers target the little ones.

But even small offices that lack IT resources should be able to access and benefit from enterprise-class network security. Managed security service providers make it simple and affordable to maintain strong data security and HIPAA compliance. Their goal is to ensure that medical practices are protected from both internal and external threats by providing them robust and powerful network management, security, and compliance services at a fraction of the costs associated with a self-managed solution.

On top of network and data security, secure wireless solutions are available through these providers so patients can access the Web while waiting for their appointments, improving the customer experience and comfort level while protecting their data. All of these implementations can be done through simple, remote installation to seamlessly integrate with the office’s current network on a timeline that works for them and doesn’t disrupt their patient service and care.

Hackers will continue to attack medical practices with laser focus as long as two truths remain – 1) Healthcare organizations continue to house financially lucrative personal information and 2) These practices continue to lack resources, processes, and technologies to prevent and detect attacks and adequately protect patient data. One of those things can never change – but the other can start right now.

The technology exists to protect healthcare practices of all sizes while keeping the burden off the practice owner’s shoulders. In order to stop the threats, however, medical offices need to take the essential step to actually use it. Diminished stress about breaches and greater confidence in their security postures means practices can focus on the most important thing – keeping their patients healthy.

Mark Cline is vice president, channel sales of Netsurion in Houston.

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

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HIStalk Practice Interviews Jay Compton, CTO, Medicity

Jay Compton is CTO of Medicity.

Tell me about yourself and the company.
I have a fairly long-standing technology background. I started working for IBM out of high school in one of their innovation centers, which was called Web Ahead at the time. It is part of the CIO’s office, where we built large-scale distribution solutions for a number of different collaboration platforms and information platforms that were ultimately rolled out to the rest of the company. I came to Aetna in 2007. I worked on a part of the Web engineering practice within Aetna’s core technology organization, and joined Healthagen in 2013. At the time, we were highly focused on how we were building new products and start-up businesses using different techniques than you see in the enterprise, and getting products up and running and out to market quickly in a very cost-effective manner.

I joined Medicity in late December to look at how we focus on data and technology within Medicity specifically. Looking at how we build clinically connected communities by focusing on making our data more usable, smarter, and available, and really leveraging it as a core strategic asset. Medicity has had tremendous growth over the last several years and has a vast network of well over a thousand hospitals at this point. It’s really poised to provide the foundational technology, support, data, aggregation, and integration for enabling population health management through the existing and very engaged network base that’s employed today. Over that time, Medicity has also really stayed true to its roots. We’re looking at creating more connective networks through the technology and increasing patient/provider engagement and at how we really enable providers to focus on data-driven decision making. Making decisions at the point of care where it matters with the most information possible. The leadership team is great and enables that innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that really makes Medicity what it is. That’s what really enticed me to join the team.

What are you looking to do specifically at Medicity with your talents?
There are two things that really got me amped to focus full time on the needs of Medicity. One is taking the technology skills I built up over the last several years and really being able to employ them on making sure the technology strategy supports the businesses strategy, and that the business strategy from is highly focused on growth. Exponential growth at that. Looking at how you grow a company and unify the businesses and technology strategy is an awesome opportunity.

It’s not often that you look at a pivotal intersection at the history of a company.Technology has drastically evolved even over the last couple of years. I’m excited that we’re looking at how we can bring new perspectives, new methods, new technologies, and experiences and really push the envelope in driving innovative solutions and advancements to enable population health management capabilities and build on the ones already used today.

How have you seen the concept of population health management evolve, and how would you define it today?
I’d like to flip it a bit and think about what population health is and then look at the evolution. Medicity was effectively doing a lot already in population health management sector in terms of how you can proactively manage the outcomes of a particular group of individuals based on evidence – even before it became a buzzword. We were providing that capability for making data-driven decisions, and we had  statistics around the group or those individuals as they traverse the health system or health network. The goal it to to provide better outcomes at a better cost. That sort of sums up what population health means to me. Again, you can ask five people and you can get five variants of the same answers still.

You also need to look at how that’s evolved to the point where you can at least formulate a definition even person by person … I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of different technologies as they’ve evolved and looked at lots of different problems across how you manage technology to support different initiatives and in a distributed manner such as managing networks with different populations. In some cases they’re systems and in some cases they’re people, but they’re all very different.

The concept of population health has really evolved to look at health systems: How’s traffic behaving? What do you need to do to make things better at the point of care and how do we make data more available? How do we create an integration strategy that is going to break down data and enable interoperability between health systems, health networks, payers, and so on to really be able to bring all that together. The confluence of all those different types of data that people interact with throughout their lives is really going to enable the best and most robust set of solutions to manage populations or cohorts of patients traversing the network. That was kind of long winded but hopefully it made sense.

Much of that same behavior, which we’ve seen in every industry that has popped up, has a buzzword related to it: Cloud, big data, population health management, artificial intelligence, etc. There are exactly as you mentioned – companies that will purport to do it, and companies that will flip their business model to focus on it. When you really look at how to be successful, and this is what is interesting about Medicity, having the data to support the concept of population health management is the number-one priority. Number two is the ability to integrate that data strategy across a vast array of other sources – to be able to normalize it, bring it together, and present it in a meaningful way. The business model can support that if you have the foundation to build on it. That’s really where Medicity is today.

What is a provider’s biggest barrier when it comes to adopting population health management technology?
Number one is understanding and having a clear definition of what population health means to them or to the solutions that they are looking to employ. Number two is the complexity of the environment that we just mentioned – having the data available and accessible in a secure and compliant manner. And finally, being able to integrate across a number of different data sources. The often overlooked portion is usability – how is a provider using that data? How is it accessible to them? Is it through an experience that they will come back to? Is it visible?

Where have you seen adoption and implementation of population health management already taking place? What does that look like from a clinical outcomes perspective?
Medicity has seen some of the benefits of the application of population health management principles already through harnessing the power of the data that’s available and creating a clinically connected community across providers. The information on a group of individuals doesn’t have to be manually compiled, and the shared data sources vary, typically vary in availability, structure, and accuracy. They can be brought together and aggregated, normalized, and provided in real time so we can accurately identify the individuals and cohorts that make up and are the population. We can have statistics and reporting around the lineage of the use of the health system and provide that in a meaningful way that allows health systems and providers to make decisions driven by data. We are making decisions based on real time, evidence-based data for an individual or a particular cohort, which describes a bit of the clinical outcome that can affect an individual or population. Medicity has been able to effectively see success in that area, which is very early in the adoption of population health management and is extremely exciting.

What’s ahead for Medicity in 2016?
This year looks like a super exciting year. We’ve got new product deployment like smart networks and smart transitions that are poised to provide systems with some of the capabilities that we just mentioned. We’re going to be looking at how networks can have greater insight into the traffic patterns within their system, and the ability to suggest improvements and therefore provide more effective and affordable care through the use of those products. That will benefit not only the individual but a cohort and the entire network overall from a risk management perspective, providing better care management, and affordable care at the same time. Other themes will include self-service, interoperability, and data visualization – all areas that we’re highly focused on. The KLAS award was a direct effect of Medicity’s super-focused work in getting out to clients, understanding what they need, and how we can use technology to enable them in a more effective and diverse manner.

Do you have any final thoughts?
Without waxing and waning too poetically, I think that HIMSS is going to be very exciting this year. FHIR, for example, is an upcoming and growing standard that is garnering support in a variety of places. How do we take technology and effectively enable it so that the focus is really centered on consumers, what they need out of the healthcare system and how providers actually deliver that care through the use of technology? What gets them more engaged and drives continuous improvement? What more can we do with the data we have and what additional data can we add to further enrich the types of decision support that providers need? Healthcare, to me, altruistically speaking, is one of, if not the most, important and impactful services a person takes advantage of in the course of their life. Looking at how we can create that enriched experience through data is going to be a key thing that you will see resonate not just from Medicity, but from the industry overall.

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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