The Role of a Smart Health IT Model in Driving Improved Outcomes

If  curiosity is the engine of achievement, then humans are at the wheel of the train. . Our curiosity has led us to ask questions, learn new things and create innovations for our own betterment. The only thing that has remained constant is change. However, the million dollar question is- at what cost are we bringing the change?

Dr. Emily Collins is a 76-year-old gynecologist in the Yellowstone county in Montana. She was in one of the reputed medical centers in the same region for past 48 years, until last month. She had to quit because the hospital recently switched to a different EHR and she could not use the EHR efficiently. Her response was, “I simply cannot practice at our hospital anymore because I don’t know how to use the new computer system.”

Most of our attention is directed towards revolutionizing healthcare with disruptive technologies, but how many times have we thought about the people who have to deal with it?

Why are these the hard and difficult times?

When it comes to finding the right solutions for healthcare, there is no single answer, especially when it comes to handling the data. However, before we find the answer, it’s imperative that we know what we’re dealing with and what is it that we have to solve. It is not the answers healthcare organizations need to worry about- but the right questions. Many organizations are not even able to identify their actual needs and end up investing in the wrong application.

Among the myriad of EHRs, the core aim of technology has got lost somewhere- providing assistance to providers and patients to make healthcare efficient. The problem often lies in the way these modules are designed. Even though it is the providers who will be using that technology on a daily basis,it is their perspective that gets left out.

One of the major challenges the organizations face is centered around the adaptability of the applications with the existing systems. These systems might lack compatibility with the new technology and cause unnecessary troubles in smooth functioning of either applications.

Another major challenge is that the technology these healthcare organizations deploy is often rigid. Despite demanding a huge sum of investment, the lack of flexibility in most of these technological solutions renders the investment a waste.

An ideal clinical IT engagement model

Imagine a situation where we are buying a car. We will initially identify our need, prepare a checklist of the showrooms, and collect every information we can to analyze every pros and cons of the model. Finally, we purchase the car and the chain breaks here. The company is not concerned about the post-purchase experience of the buyer.

However, healthcare IT should not follow such ‘ship and deliver’ model as the demands and needs of the healthcare organizations change every 1.5 years approximately. They cannot be deployed once and left for the physicians to deal with.

It is crucial that the IT applications are flexible enough to adjust with the evolving needs of the organization as well as healthcare. The best approach is to initially identify the immediate needs and build the IT infrastructure for the organization by selecting suitable applications and solutions. Finally, it is about understanding the changes and modifying the existing infrastructure.

Leaving the answers behind and asking the right questions!

It is important for physicians to be able to easily engage with the IT infrastructure of the organization. The IT applications need to have the right attributes to attain right IT engagement with the hospital and physician.

But what are the right attributes?

• Ability to stratify patient population based on their risk profiles and track their health status
• Analyze and report the performance of the organization drilled-down to each level to measure the effectiveness of interventions.
• Ability to identify and reduce high cost-drivers and leakages.
• Track the efficiency of all care and non-care operations to address gaps in care in real-time.
• Ability to capture ADT feeds in the most autonomous way to assist care teams.

How to attain the right IT engagement- implementing a data-driven strategy

“Implementing the perfect IT solution is the need, but identifying and defining ‘the perfect’ is a hard nut to crack,” says the COO of an Iowa-based ACO. In my opinion, apart from defining and identifying, we can add the term- executing. What healthcare organizations need, regarding technology, is a robust, responsive, and intelligent platform to automatically identify the needs, define an appropriate strategy, and execute the best solution.

Innovaccer’s unified healthcare data platform provides a single source of truth in terms of information by perfectly blending data from an exhaustive list of data sources including ADT feeds, CCDA, HL7 feeds, and many more. The platform empowers organizations to gain claims-based insights and individual reports on clinical, financial, or operational performance measures. It helps them keep a track of every term and clause mentioned in the contracts of the clinic with the payers.

Additionally, the care management module, InCare, is embedded in the same data platform for better visibility. It performs an automatic identification of patients through pre-defined triggers thereby enabling care teams to access the right data at the right time and in a single click. It is instrumental in automating the workflows and priorities for health coaches to enhance and track the tangible impacts of care coordination initiatives on population health.

It’s important that data, care, and quality are on a level playing field. Embedding care management and reporting applications with data management will allow providers to learn more about their performance and the health of their population

The road ahead

Dealing with data is not merely a question of integration, but generating a clinical IT environment that allows physicians to actually engage with it. No physician needs to be overburdened just because the IT applications are not effective enough to provide proper assistance. It is time we changed the perception of technology from something of a burden and an additional regulatory requirement to something that is meant to help physicians. It’s time for innovations which don’t just support providers but open a new world of opportunities for them.

To learn how smart evaluation of your clinical IT engagement can put your organization at the forefront of efficient healthcare, get a demo.

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Join Team Innovaccer at booth #H this NAACOS Spring 2018 Conference, from April 25 to 27, at Hilton Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland and learn how we can assist you in delivering an efficient, data-driven healthcare