Readers Write: Inspiring IT Action to Improve Flu Season Outcomes

Inspiring IT Action to Improve Flu-Season Outcomes
By Sara Johnston

The busy cold and flu season can be a challenging time for physicians inundated by patients with coughs, colds, and fevers – not to mention the calls, questions, and scheduling demands associated with them. The added interactions can cause delays to the appointment schedule and result in unhappy patients left waiting for appointments longer than necessary all the while increasing the chances of potential exposure to  viruses lurking in the waiting room. To help alleviate this burden, physician practices should consider using a point-of-care education strategy to deliver flu vaccine information. In so doing, they can reduce the headaches and burdens associated with flu season and inspire healthy actions to improve outcomes, while at the same time improving the patient experience, enhancing patient loyalty, and increasing practice profitability.

Point-of-Care Education

POC education leverages the moment that healthcare is top-of-mind with patients – as they are waiting to see their provider – to deliver health-related messaging. Messaging can be delivered via print or digital channels; in the waiting room or exam room; and typically takes the form of video loops on a television monitor, tablet-based interactive modules, print brochures, or wall panels. Individual practices typically tailor the offering with messages specific to their practice.

For physicians, there are many benefits to educating their patients on the flu vaccine. Having higher rates of vaccination among their patient base means that patients are less likely to get sick with the flu. The vaccine also can be an important preventive tool for patients with other chronic health conditions, and can help reduce hospitalizations. At the same time, by increasing the number of vaccinated patients, physicians are less likely to experience interrupted workflows and additional winter scheduling pressures, since fewer patients will require emergency sick appointments for unexpected flu visits. Practice productivity can increase, as the burden of remembering to remind patients about flu vaccines and other practice announcements can be incorporated into the POC offering.

Action Leads to Positive Outcomes

When patients are engaged at the point of care, they are more likely to be inquisitive about their health and to discuss treatments with their physicians. In partnership with 15 practices running flu education campaigns, AccentHealth recently conducted interviews with a research firm to assess patient behavior in response to POC messaging. The study showed that patients who were exposed to flu-specific POC messaging were 68 percent more likely to discuss the vaccine with their doctor that day, and patients who typically do not vaccinate were 8.6 times more likely, compared to those who were not exposed to the messaging.

What’s more, recall rates were quite high and patients appreciated receiving the information while in the waiting room. A large majority of patients found the flu information helpful, relevant and effective. Not only did the POC messaging lead to more interest and discussion with their healthcare providers, patients exposed to messaging were ready to take action. The discussions that day led to significantly more doctor recommendations for the vaccine compared to patients not exposed to the flu-specific POC messaging; a number of patients received the vaccine that day or planned to shortly thereafter.

Satisfied Patients

When patients recalled the flu messaging at the point of care, they were more likely to feel cared for by their physician, with 80 percent noting that the messaging reflected positively on the doctor’s office. The degree to which patients valued the information is reflected in the fact that not only did they initiate conversations with doctors, but they were also 87 percent more likely to recommend the flu vaccine to their friends compared to those who did not see the messaging.

The survey confirmed that patients view the physician’s office as their top source of information for flu and flu vaccines – more so than Internet-based information, print media, advertising, family, and friends. This includes not only conversations with their healthcare provider but also the information available in the doctor’s waiting room.

Increasing Practice Profitability

Providing flu education at the point of care can add to a practice’s profitability. Research shows that patients influenced to take action typically do not plan to receive the flu vaccine at another location. Flu vaccines administered at the practice can augment practice income, sometimes providing a significant portion of the overall revenue.

In short, POC flu education can be an effective tool for physicians looking to improve patient outcomes, create office efficiencies, and generate additional revenue for the practice. By educating on flu vaccines, physician practices can improve the patient experience, create greater loyalties, and help patients feel greater care.

Sara Johnston is senior manager, Insights and Analytics, at AccentHealth in New York City.

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Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 1/16/17

Top News

MDlive dives deeper into the employer market with the launch of MDlive prime, a collection of virtual health and wellness benefits for small businesses. The plan – offered as either a stand-alone product to small businesses that don’t offer traditional insurance or an add-on to employers that do – gives employees unlimited virtual consults (including behavioral health counseling), pharmacy benefits, and a soon-to-be released cost comparison tool.

Webinars

January 18 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Modernizing Quality Improvement Through Clinical Process Measurement.” Sponsored by LogicStream Health. Presenters: Peter Chang, MD, CMIO, Tampa General Hospital; Brita Hansen, MD, CHIO, Hennepin County Medical Center. The presenters will describe how they implemented successful quality governance programs, engaged with their health system stakeholders, and delivered actionable information to clinical leadership and front-line clinicians. Q&A will follow.

January 26 (Thursday) 1:00 ET. “Jump Start Your Care Coordination Program: 6 Strategies for Delivering Efficient, Effective Care.” Sponsored by Healthwise. Presenters: Jim Rogers, RN, RPSGT, director of healthcare solutions, Persistent Systems; Jason Burum, chief client officer, Healthwise. This webinar will explain how to implement a patient-centered care coordination program that will increase quality as well as margins. It will provide real-world examples of how organizations used care coordination to decrease readmission rates, ED visits, and costs.

February 1 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Get your data ready for MACRA: Leveraging technology to achieve PHM goals.” Sponsored by Medicity. Presenters: Brian Ahier, director of standards and government affairs, Medicity; Eric Crawford, project manager, Medicity; Adam Bell, RN, senior clinical consultant, Medicity. Earning performance incentives under MACRA/MIPS requires a rich, complete data asset. Use the 2017 transition year to identify technology tools that can address gaps in care, transform data into actionable information, and support population health goals and prepare your organization for 2018 reporting requirements.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

McLean, VA-based Cognosante, a government programs-focused health IT consulting firm, moves into the Louisiana Business & Technology Center in Baton Rouge. The incubator offers office space and access to business counselors and the expertise of MBA graduate students. 

People

Ronald Keurbitz (Fresenius Medical Care North America) joins fledgling physician practice management company Agilon Health as CEO.

Former CMS COO Mandy Cohen, MD joins the State of North Carolina as HHS secretary.

Telemedicine

Oakland, CA-based Dictum Health receives government clearance to offer its hardware and cloud-based software telemedicine services to providers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Thailand.

The local news highlights the growing role telemedicine plays when winter storms hit, helping patients receive diagnoses and treatment while safely staying put at home. Kaiser Permanente Northwest Physical Therapist Kirsten Pauken corresponded with a colleague via the technology during one house call made by skis to check on a patient suffering from a skin infection. “It’s been such a hard winter with so many icy days,” she says. “At least I have the option to ski. It was not too bad. The snow was a little heavy. There was not as much slide as normal.” KPN has been training its providers on telemedicine visits over the last year.

Agricultural health plan UnitedAg expands its services agreement with Teladoc to include behavioral health, dermatology, and smoking cessation for its 35,000 members, many who farm in rural areas with a lack of mental health services. The payer partnered with Elite Medical to open a member health clinic in Visalia, CA late last year.

Government and Politics

The Council of Accountable Physician Practices joins other trade associations in offering unsolicited advice to repeal-and-replace lawmakers. Chairman Robert Peal, MD who also serves as CEO of The Permanente Medical Group and the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, recommends that legislators focus on speeding up the move to value-based payments, more widespread and efficient coordination of care via healthcare technology, and simplified and standardized quality measurement and reporting for easier benchmarking. “In the debate over healthcare reform, we must not ignore the importance of improving how healthcare services are organized and delivered,” he explains. “If we do not continue to emphasize the need for care initiatives that promote physician-led, value-based, patient-centered, technologically-enabled care, we will lose ground in quality, innovation, and outcomes that lower the cost of healthcare, while making it more available and convenient to patients. The consequences of inaction for our patients, their communities, and the nation are significant.”

CNN offers up several physician opinions of the ACA. Some blame it for increased administrative burdens while others tout its benefits for safety net populations. Atlanta-based urologist Brian Hill, MD who sold his practice to Northside Hospital several years ago, believes that “[W]e, as physicians, have dropped the ball. We’ve given up our role. Our role should be the caretakers of healthcare, and instead we gave that to the insurance companies. We got other people to step in. We’ve got to look at a way to allow physicians to innovate, to change, to bring forward a better product than what’s out there right now. There are people out here that love healthcare, that love providing care for their patients, and believe that there’s a better way. And I think that’s where this is going to come from. I think the solutions are going to come from us.” Like many, Hill is thinking about entering the telemedicine space.

The Federation of State Medical Boards encourages the incoming administration to support state efforts to join the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which looks to expedite physician licensing across state lines and thus increase access to telemedicine services. (Eighteen states have enacted the compact thus far.) It also prioritizes working with federal agencies to combat the opioid crisis, and accelerating access to telemedicine services for active-duty military and veterans.

Other

She puts my Goodreads account to shame: Four year-old Gainesville, GA native Daliyah Marie Arana acts as “Librarian for a Day” at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The bookworm achieved the honor after completing the Georgia Public Library literacy program called 1,000 Books B4 Kindergarten. I may have mentioned this before, but my first job was a library assistant at my local public library. It was a dream job given my love of reading and the perk of getting my hands on best-sellers before they were made available to patrons.

Sponsor Updates

• Rock Health awards Medicity’s Brian Ahier with the Digital Health Evangelist of 2017 award. Snowed in and unable to accept the award in person, Ahier posts his acceptance speech from his blanketed driveway.
• Nordic Consulting releases a new podcast, “What the best health IT consultants do at the end of their contracts.”

Blog Posts

• RTLS: A Hot Healthcare Technology to Watch in 2017 (Versus Technology)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 1/12/17

Top News

Pensacola Beach, FL-based Green Circle Health will open a new facility in Indiana via a $1 million economic development investment that will help it add 125 jobs over the next five years. Launched in 2013, the healthcare management and wellness company will house its remote healthcare and coaching services at the initially 1,000 square-foot service center. The expansion news comes on the heels of its second-place finish in ONC’s Consumer Health Data Aggregator Challenge. The company developed an app that uses FHIR to import patient data into a family health dashboard that receives and serves up personal and medical device data, remote monitoring, and reminders. The full list of ONC winners, including those of the Provider User Experience Challenge, can be found here.

Webinars

January 18 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Modernizing Quality Improvement Through Clinical Process Measurement.” Sponsored by LogicStream Health. Presenters: Peter Chang, MD, CMIO, Tampa General Hospital; Brita Hansen, MD, CHIO, Hennepin County Medical Center. The presenters will describe how they implemented successful quality governance programs, engaged with their health system stakeholders, and delivered actionable information to clinical leadership and front-line clinicians. Q&A will follow.

January 26 (Thursday) 1:00 ET. “Jump Start Your Care Coordination Program: 6 Strategies for Delivering Efficient, Effective Care.” Sponsored by Healthwise. Presenters: Jim Rogers, RN, RPSGT, director of healthcare solutions, Persistent Systems; Jason Burum, chief client officer, Healthwise. This webinar will explain how to implement a patient-centered care coordination program that will increase quality as well as margins. It will provide real-world examples of how organizations used care coordination to decrease readmission rates, ED visits, and costs.

Announcements and Implementations

MyMedLeads updates its CRM software to include text and voice appointment reminders, patient recall campaigns, and improved targeting and segmentation.

Florida Radiology Leasing renews its RCM agreement with Zotec Partners.

Modernizing Medicine releases the latest version of its EHR for ophthalmologists, which includes the ability to interface with the FlexSys optical inventory and point-of-sale system.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Walgreens stores will serve as FedEx drop-off and pick-up locations beginning this spring. The companies will expand roll-out of the service to nearly 8,000 stores by the fall of 2018. Walgreens no doubts hopes to garner a few extra purchases from customers stopping by to take care of shipping –  a move similar in nature to its decision to get into the retail clinic business. FedEx cites internal research that shows that “customers rank pharmacies as a preferred location for accessing their e-commerce shipments” (which is news to me) as impetus for its role in the agreement.

This article hints at Nokia’s plans to enter the digital health space. The company, which quit making phones when it sold that part of its business to Microsoft in 2013, will base its digital health business on the Withing assets it acquired last year. Nokia/Withings will undergo an official rebranding at some later date, with the Nokia name taking top spot on Withings devices. “Digital health is one of the biggest IoT verticals that has emerged and is very consistent with Nokia’s vision and assets,” explains Nokia VP of Digital Health (and former Withings CEO) Cedric Hutchings. “[I]t’s about being able to scale with mass-market potential, the capacity to partner with large-scale strategic partnerships.”

People

Shawn Crawford (Central Virginia Family Physicians & MD Resource) joins Privia Medical Group – Southwest Virginia as president.

Telemedicine

TriageLogic launches a direct-to-employer telemedicine service that offers nurse-first consulting. The new Continuwell business, which will be led by CEO Charu Raheja, aims to cut down on the costs associated with initially consulting a physician during virtual encounters. If necessary, the service will connect patients to its licensed physicians, or pass them along to the employer’s preferred telemedicine vendor.

SnapMD adds administrative patient queue management tools to its telemedicine platform.

Government and Politics

In case you were wondering: HHS releases a tip sheet (including advice on dressing for cold temperatures) for those looking to join in the inauguration festivities on January 20. The city will operate 20 medical stations along the parade route. Smithsonian buildings will offer warming stations to the hundreds of thousands of people expected to attend. Fun (but sad) inauguration day fact: President William Henry Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address. The nearly two-hour speech was delivered on a cold and rainy day, likely causing the pneumonia that killed him a month later.

Other

A tip of the hat to HIStalk Practice reader Chip Hart, who turned me on to EY Entrepreneur of the Year – Healthcare winner KidsPlusPediatrics. Pittsburgh-based physicians Todd Wolynn, MD and Albert Wolf, MD entered the contest a total of three times, truly making the third time the charm. They seem genuinely humble in describing their awards-show experience, which took them from a regional to national stage with the likes of Mailchimp and Fitbit. “We’re innovating in a very slow, conservative world of healthcare,” says Wolf. “I didn’t know if they would understand how different we are from other doctors.” I’m hoping to interview them soon about their healthcare technology experiences.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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HIStalk Practice Interviews Caraline Coats, Vice President, Provider Engagement, Humana

Caraline Coats is vice president of provider engagement at Humana.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I am the vice president of Humana’s Development Center of Excellence department. We are largely a team that supports Humana’s enterprise goals around our value-based journey, supporting our physicians and their overall experience as they move from volume to value. My team supports our network and our market leaders on choosing the right physicians – those who make good partners. We want to develop a long-term understanding of what their needs and capabilities are and meet them along the way on our continuum. Humana doesn’t really have a one-size-fits-all. We have different options to meet physician needs depending on their infrastructure, capabilities, and appetite to launch from volume to value. My team serves as the internal operations support for our value-based goals.

My background is historically more of what you call your traditional managed-care contracting and more transactional oriented. I’ve worked both with physicians and in the hospital space in doing contracting and negotiations, and have also served in leadership roles with Humana in our network organization. It’s been within the last four to five years that I’ve transitioned myself from what I’d call the volume to the value world. I feel like I’ve been making that journey in parallel with our physician community. As the industry is evolving that way, Humana is growing its own capability to support physicians in that space.

When did Humana launch its provider quality rewards program? How have you seen provider interest in that grow?

Humana has actually been in the value-based space for over 20 years. We have had what I call a more standard physician rewards program for the last five or six years, and it’s really progressed as the industry has progressed. Outside of the markets that have been more mature in it, the program is offered to engage and support physicians early on around certain quality metrics. It provides financial and clinical data to manage that core, founding population. We work with them along the journey to determine if and when they’re ready to move beyond just upside only and take some element of risk.

We start with physicians early on, looking at opportunities and ensuring that they’re provided with adequate data that is actionable around their population. We help them grow critical mass with them, mitigating any volatility in the numbers to help move them farther along that continuum where, eventually, they can share in some of the upside and downside risk.

How does Humana recruit physicians for the program?

We don’t have a formal recruiting program. We have a lot of local resources on the ground through our market and our leadership team through building relationships with physicians and understanding what their needs are – what programs we can offer to meet them along the way. We have over 900 value-based relationships and that continues to grow. We have increasing goals each year to put more and more physicians in our value-based programs, but I emphasize it’s not just around the number. It’s around really finding the right partnership and the right place on the continuum. I think with that it’s not so much a recruitment as it is just building deeper relationships with our physicians and finding out how we can support them.

How has technology impacted the ability of practices to succeed in your value-based programs?

Technology is critical to a physician’s ability to effectively manage population in the value-based space. Humana does provide some population health capabilities that provide financial and clinical data to the physicians around the population that they’re managing. We now have an increasing utilization of this capability from the physician’s self-service perspective. Historically, we have provided the data and the reports directly to them, which we continue to do but are now allowing functionality where they can access it themselves and use that data to turn it into actionable information to manage their population.

How does the quality rewards program fit into physician plans to participate in MACRA and its quality-improvement programs?

We’re all learning about MACRA. At a high level, it’s value-based, so MACRA is CMS’ way of moving physicians from just volume to value, and rewarding them for improvement in quality around certain metrics. I would say the fundamental feature of our value-based program does that. It has quality metrics built in and we work with the physicians on measuring, improving on, and rewarding for those metrics. Fundamentally, the concept is the same. How our program evolves to align with MACRA is in progress. We’re determining what will make the most sense for physicians to mitigate a lot of disruption, but continue an improved experience where ultimately their patients are getting the most high-quality care.

Aside from the quality rewards program, how is Humana helping physician practices implement population health management programs? You alluded to data earlier. Are there any other ways you’d like to highlight?

Yes, continuing evolution of the data and actionable information that we can provide to them. I don’t want to underestimate the local resources that we have on the ground. We have regular joint operating committees with our value-based physicians to review data, understand obstacles and barriers, and understand what they need to continue successful evolution in their value-based programs. That face to face relationship with the physician I think is instrumental to continuing success.

Outside of that local market level, we now have value-based executive care forums that are led by our office of the CMO. We call in value-based physicians from around the country and have a day-and-a-half session – an open forum – so they can learn from each other, we can hear directly from them and understand how we can support them in population health.

Given the direct feedback you’ve received, what are the biggest barriers practices face when it comes to implementing population health management or value-based programs, and how is Humana working to help practices overcome those barriers?

One of the biggest things we hear, and it’s not unique to Humana, is that we need to do something different for everyone. Even looking at MACRA coming up, what does that mean? To report different data when you have traditional Medicare, plus a handful of health plans … it’s the different offices and the different programs. Payers including Humana can look at how we can provide a physical solution to them to improve the administrative burden, if you will, of all those different programs so that they can focus on patient care and adhering to one program that ultimately meets the quality of their patients and improves their experience.

Do you have any final thoughts?

No, other than Humana recognizes the world of value-based care is evolving and every physician’s need is different, every practice’s need is unique. We continue to learn from each market and each physician, and strive to evolve our programs, options, and capabilities to best meet them where they are so they can successfully grow in this space.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 1/11/17

Top News

Cal Index – the nonprofit medical data exchange founded by Anthem and Blue Shield of California in 2014 – will merge with the Inland Empire HIE. The newly combined organization (which will be renamed in the coming weeks) will facilitate access to the insurance claims and medical records of 1.67 million patients, making it one of California’s largest HIEs. Claudia Williams will lead the new organization beginning February 1 (making her the HIE’s fourth CEO). She comes with a strong background in technology, having served as senior advisor for health innovation and technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as ONC’s director of HIE.

Webinars

January 18 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Modernizing Quality Improvement Through Clinical Process Measurement.” Sponsored by LogicStream Health. Presenters: Peter Chang, MD, CMIO, Tampa General Hospital; Brita Hansen, MD, CHIO, Hennepin County Medical Center. The presenters will describe how they implemented successful quality governance programs, engaged with their health system stakeholders, and delivered actionable information to clinical leadership and front-line clinicians. Q&A will follow.

January 26 (Thursday) 1:00 ET. “Jump Start Your Care Coordination Program: 6 Strategies for Delivering Efficient, Effective Care.” Sponsored by Healthwise. Presenters: Jim Rogers, RN, RPSGT, director of healthcare solutions, Persistent Systems; Jason Burum, chief client officer, Healthwise. This webinar will explain how to implement a patient-centered care coordination program that will increase quality as well as margins. It will provide real-world examples of how organizations used care coordination to decrease readmission rates, ED visits, and costs.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Northwell Health (NY) launches practice management firm Formativ Health with backing from private-equity firm Pamplona Capital Management. The company, which will draw on Northwell’s management services expertise and partnership with Georgia-based RCM vendor NThrive (the former MedAssets-Precyse), looks to offer employed and independent physicians RCM, patient access, PM, and advisory services. Dennis Dowling (third from the right), who oversaw Northwell’s ambulatory services, will lead the new company.

Announcements and Implementations

Orca Health updates its point-of-care patient education app, giving physicians the ability to digitally send care plans to patients for review.

Healthcare analytics company Innovaccer develops an ACO comparison dashboard to help providers benchmark performance against CMS reporting measures, and compare beneficiaries and shared savings over a three-year period.

MedEvolve adds financial, operational, and clinical analytics to its PM and RCM offerings.

People

Intelligent Medical Objects promotes Eric Rose, MD to VP of terminology management.

Telemedicine

TechCrunch profiles San Francisco-based Remedy, a telemedicine startup just out of beta that uses artificial intelligence to power its virtual consult platform. Led by former SpaceX engineer and Milwaukee Brewers analytics consultant William Jack, the company is hoping to differentiate itself from its competitors by offering continuous physician engagement after the initial visit and potentially opening brick-and-mortar clinics.

WEDI publishes a brief introducing physicians to codes for telemedicine services. The challenges related to coding for telemedicine include the creation of codes for universal use that are still capable of capturing detailed telemedicine services, and a lack of consistency among payers when it comes to requirements, coverage, valuation, and payment.

Government and Politics

CMS releases more details on the Medicare ACO Track 1 model, which has been designed to encourage small practices to move forward with performance-based risk. The track, which starts in 2018, incorporates more limited downside risk thank Tracks 2 and 3, and will meet the elements required to be an Advanced Alternative Payment Model.

Other

Say it ain’t so, Hasbro: In an effort to refresh the classic game of Monopoly, the toy company is asking players to vote on new game tokens, including a hashtag, winky face and kissy emojis, and a thumbs-up. The winning tokens will be revealed in March and included in the new Token Madness edition. I guess the game gathering dust in my closet is fairly old since it contains the iron, which was replaced by a cat in 2013. I wonder what kind of tokens we could come up with for a health IT version. A Blue Button? Wearable?

I love this idea: The Society for Participatory Medicine seeks donations for a travel fund it’s setting up for e-patients who want to attend, speak, and cover industry conferences. HIStalk offered several HIMSS scholarships to a handful of patients several years ago; their feedback on the sessions and exhibit hall was definitely refreshing.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Top Three AdvancedMD Product Web Pages in 2016 (AdvancedMD)
• Millenials want streamlined healthcare service (Intelligent Medical Objects)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.