Three-year technology road map to engage stakeholders
October 14, 2016
By Bipin Thomas
This article is the second part of a three-year technology road map series. There are a large number of participants and stakeholders who will play important roles in the new health care ecosystem, and who must adapt to its new consumer-centric imperative in concert with one another. Medical device companies, home health enterprises, employers, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies and many others will need to be connected and exchange data seamlessly. The success of this massive new undertaking will clearly hinge on continuous advances in data intelligence.
Payers
Because of the mandatory sharing of electronic health records, payers can access claims from any health insurer, which lets them understand consumer demand and motivations. Using analytics, payers could identify effective interventions according to demographic data, and set financial incentives that would prompt beneficial behavioral and lifestyle changes.
Pharmaceuticals and life sciences
Promoting access to clinical research trials, big data will help clinicians apply those results to optimizing treatment plans and translating scientific studies into better patient outcomes.
Wellness (lifestyle/behaviors)
In the area of wellness, consumers can comb social media posts for self-reported data and gather peer-to-peer intelligence, comparing those sources with information from mobile monitors and telehealth metrics to learn more about pathologies and health among distinct populations.
Medical devices
Medical devices are true drivers of the overall paradigm shift: connectivity and interoperability are crucial to a fully contextualized electronic medical record. Here is where government regulation has major influence (think of CMS’ “Meaningful Use,” for instance).
Second-year technology road map
In the second year, hospitals must engage and integrate other external stakeholders such as pharmacies, primary care clinics, community-based clinics and home health agencies as an extension of their health system. Health care organizations that already participate in these types of relationships can seek opportunities for deeper engagement that can achieve strategic goals.
Hospital decision-makers must also be transparent about how the organization is motivating people and keeping them healthier through various interventions, clinically and financially. To achieve this transparency, hospitals should develop patient-facing systems to offer a comprehensive view of integrated care delivery. This year will call for a structural transition from capital to operating expenditures and development of a comprehensive road map to IT transformation.
As hospital staff get accustomed to thinking about service and performance from the customer’s standpoint, including the financial side of the organization (where population health management and payment reform reside), the retail mindset will gradually grow. In this stage of the journey, the executive leadership should focus on the following key areas: developing a comprehensive financial transition plan, from capex to opex, for technology-led transformation; rolling out shared service platforms to link the multiple roles and entities across the care continuum; and establishing the management model for enhancing the consumer experience through an integrated care delivery system. Implementing performance metrics includes:
• Successful coding and integration of normalized clinical and financial data, including once-fragmented interfaces such as electronic medical records, prescriptions, lab results, health information exchanges and unstructured physician notes.
• Connection between provider representatives (case managers and discharge planners) and community resources, including scheduling, transportation, communication, documentation and reporting tools.
• Supports for referral management.
• Active provider engagement in supporting health information exchange.
Data will continue to accelerate the market forces involved in transforming the health care system into an “ecosystem,” and health care’s data are more sensitive, more varied and more unstructured. Technology is key to this effort. With the expected increase of wearable medical bio-tracking devices as well as traditional medical technologies made “smarter,” data are on the rise, and so are new ways to analyze it. From new knowledge about lifestyle choices and even newer understanding of how best to influence them (and, on the provider side, increasing transparency about procedure costs and outcomes), performance-measured accountability will gain prominence among all health care stakeholders.
About the author: Bipin Thomas is a renowned global thought-leader on consumer-centric health care transformation. Thomas is a board member of HealthCare Business News magazine and chairman of ICURO, a digital business outcomes management organization, where he is redefining personalized care delivery by connecting all stakeholders in the emerging health care ecosystem.
This article is the second part of a three-year technology road map series. There are a large number of participants and stakeholders who will play important roles in the new health care ecosystem, and who must adapt to its new consumer-centric imperative in concert with one another. Medical device companies, home health enterprises, employers, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies and many others will need to be connected and exchange data seamlessly. The success of this massive new undertaking will clearly hinge on continuous advances in data intelligence.
Payers
Because of the mandatory sharing of electronic health records, payers can access claims from any health insurer, which lets them understand consumer demand and motivations. Using analytics, payers could identify effective interventions according to demographic data, and set financial incentives that would prompt beneficial behavioral and lifestyle changes.
Pharmaceuticals and life sciences
Promoting access to clinical research trials, big data will help clinicians apply those results to optimizing treatment plans and translating scientific studies into better patient outcomes.
Wellness (lifestyle/behaviors)
In the area of wellness, consumers can comb social media posts for self-reported data and gather peer-to-peer intelligence, comparing those sources with information from mobile monitors and telehealth metrics to learn more about pathologies and health among distinct populations.
Medical devices
Medical devices are true drivers of the overall paradigm shift: connectivity and interoperability are crucial to a fully contextualized electronic medical record. Here is where government regulation has major influence (think of CMS’ “Meaningful Use,” for instance).
Second-year technology road map
In the second year, hospitals must engage and integrate other external stakeholders such as pharmacies, primary care clinics, community-based clinics and home health agencies as an extension of their health system. Health care organizations that already participate in these types of relationships can seek opportunities for deeper engagement that can achieve strategic goals.
Hospital decision-makers must also be transparent about how the organization is motivating people and keeping them healthier through various interventions, clinically and financially. To achieve this transparency, hospitals should develop patient-facing systems to offer a comprehensive view of integrated care delivery. This year will call for a structural transition from capital to operating expenditures and development of a comprehensive road map to IT transformation.
As hospital staff get accustomed to thinking about service and performance from the customer’s standpoint, including the financial side of the organization (where population health management and payment reform reside), the retail mindset will gradually grow. In this stage of the journey, the executive leadership should focus on the following key areas: developing a comprehensive financial transition plan, from capex to opex, for technology-led transformation; rolling out shared service platforms to link the multiple roles and entities across the care continuum; and establishing the management model for enhancing the consumer experience through an integrated care delivery system. Implementing performance metrics includes:
• Successful coding and integration of normalized clinical and financial data, including once-fragmented interfaces such as electronic medical records, prescriptions, lab results, health information exchanges and unstructured physician notes.
• Connection between provider representatives (case managers and discharge planners) and community resources, including scheduling, transportation, communication, documentation and reporting tools.
• Supports for referral management.
• Active provider engagement in supporting health information exchange.
Data will continue to accelerate the market forces involved in transforming the health care system into an “ecosystem,” and health care’s data are more sensitive, more varied and more unstructured. Technology is key to this effort. With the expected increase of wearable medical bio-tracking devices as well as traditional medical technologies made “smarter,” data are on the rise, and so are new ways to analyze it. From new knowledge about lifestyle choices and even newer understanding of how best to influence them (and, on the provider side, increasing transparency about procedure costs and outcomes), performance-measured accountability will gain prominence among all health care stakeholders.
About the author: Bipin Thomas is a renowned global thought-leader on consumer-centric health care transformation. Thomas is a board member of HealthCare Business News magazine and chairman of ICURO, a digital business outcomes management organization, where he is redefining personalized care delivery by connecting all stakeholders in the emerging health care ecosystem.