Value-based care requires moving to a consolidated data platform

Innovaccer and Microsoft industry experts explore how eliminating data silos can lead to improved member experiences and reduced costs.

One of the top health systems in the country was struggling with the challenges of a fragmented infrastructure. The pandemic was causing additional strain on their systems, and they realized their clinical infrastructure was not scaling to meet rapidly changing needs. Their health network and affiliate organizations were also challenged with managing data from a variety of disconnected EHR systems, making it difficult to access accurate insights on patients in the network.

By moving to a cloud platform, they unified patient data across multiple systems and simplified workflows across teams. They created a 360-degree view of all data related to cost, utilization, risk, and quality, and consolidated the primary care provider and care coordination in one longitudinal patient record which became the single source of truth.

In the transition to value-based care, fragmented healthcare data is one of the biggest obstacles. Typically, legacy systems store data in silos, which can’t be accessed by all healthcare stakeholders. As a result, connecting disparate data sets for informed and timely decision-making is difficult. Eliminating data silos by moving to a cloud platform is crucial to improve member health outcomes and experiences, as well as reduce costs.

Data fragmentation hinders critical healthcare initiatives

Data fragmentation and a lack of coordination impede initiatives such as population health management, care coordination, price transparency mandates, and value-based reimbursement—all initiatives that require the ability to access clinical, financial, and operational data sets.

“Analytics tend to be limited due to data fragmentation and a lack of standardized digitalization,” says Meltem Kutik, Senior Director of Growth Strategy at Innovaccer. “Payers are chasing and cleaning data sets, or they are creating data sets manually for different use cases.”

Limited analytics impact payers’ innovation efforts and contribute to the administrative complexity linked to more than $265 billion in unnecessary annual healthcare spending in the United States.

Breaking down silos requires dedicated time and resources

Disparate data sources must be consolidated in a centralized data set, but creating a centralized data set is resource-intensive and time-consuming. It involves six key processes: ingest, normalize, unify, enhance, convert, and visualize.

“Investing in multiple solutions contributes to creating additional silos,” notes Kutik. “It involves building expertise in using new solutions, allocating resources, and managing and maintaining multiple solutions. And if they are not integrated out of the box—that can pose an even greater challenge.”

Payers often rely on months-old, stale claims data that isn’t current with EHR or patient-generated data. Instead of working with a shared data set, they work from their own siloed data. As a result, payers and providers struggle to coordinate care and align incentives under value-based care arrangements.

A cloud-based data platform serves as a centralized data hub

Cloud-based health data platforms make data accessible, standardized, and ready for analysis. There is no need to scrub data sets manually, enabling data science teams to work with data almost immediately. Collaborators can view a unified member record, use the data and extract insights for meaningful action, align incentives, and benefit from shared savings.

“The cloud data platform enables the ingestion of data from various sources, and once it’s on the platform, it’s no longer fragmented,” says Amy Berk, M.S.N., RN, Director of Population Health at Microsoft. “You’re no longer limited to the internal data sets that you’ve traditionally used.

Teaming up to build a foundation for cloud innovation

Microsoft and Innovaccer have partnered to solve healthcare challenges with cloud technology. The Innovaccer Health CloudⓇ provides the foundation for rapid, seamless digital transformation. It unifies healthcare data in a single, longitudinal member record and generates point-of-care insights. The platform includes pre-built applications to help care teams improve outcomes.

Microsoft Azure is the cloud data platform of choice for hospitals, health systems, payers, and government agencies. It aggregates data from medical claims, pharmacy claims, EHRs, other clinical sources, labs, and non-clinical sources including SDoH, and integrates seamlessly with Innovaccer’s cloud-based Data Activation Platform.

Implementing the Innovaccer Health Cloud on the Azure platform offers a more configurable platform that enables applications to streamline workflows and provide analytics-driven decision support. With payers and providers using the same data set, they can set common goals for care coordination and value-based reimbursement.

To tackle these challenges effectively—administrative burdens, fragmented care delivery, and siloed data—providers in value-based contracts must adapt to digital transformation. Moving to a health cloud data platform offers three core benefits to payers and providers—data fluidity, scalability, and accountability–which helps to lay a foundation for a successful transition to digital transformation.

To learn more, download the white paper co-authored by Microsoft and Innovaccer: From Siloed To Seamless: Consolidate Payer Data To Improve Savings, Outcomes And The Member Experience.