Electronic Health Reporter

eClinicalWorks, a leader in ambulatory healthcare IT solutions, recognizes the success of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in generating savings for the healthcare industry. Through eClinicalWorks Care Coordination Medical Record® (CCMR), the company currently works with a wide variety of Medicare, Medicaid and other shared savings programs, aiding them in population health management. Many of these organizations are experiencing the benefits outlined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week.

According to a press release by HHS, “ACOs in the Pioneer ACO Model and Medicare Shared Savings Program (Shared Savings Program) generated over $372 million in total program savings for Medicare ACOs. The encouraging news comes from preliminary quality and financial results from the second year of performance for 23 Pioneer ACOs, and final results from the first year of performance for 220 Shared Savings Program ACOs.”

Organizations that have benefitted from this model include:

“Amarillo Legacy Medical ACO was formed to provide quality care with less hassle and expense,” said William C. Biggs, MD FACE CEO, Medical Director, Amarillo Legacy Medical ACO, which has saved $4.88 million and received $2.34 million in shared savings. “We have found this model to be extremely successful and eClinicalWorks CCMR has provided the technology required for this organizational structure. The solution levels the playing-field by giving clinical and financial data to all stakeholders, including administrators, providers and care planners. Its closed loop analytics along with care planning technology has helped facilitate quality improvement and cost savings.”

“Coastal Medical continuously looks for ways to improve quality of care, especially through the use of technology,” said Ed McGookin, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Coastal Medical, which reduced healthcare costs in their CMS Medicare population by $7.27 million and received $3.56 million in savings. “The tight integration eClinicalWorks has between the EHR and CCMR will make it a powerful and robust tool. We believe CCMR will streamline our current population health analytics and become instrumental in helping Coastal, and other eClinicalWorks users, meet their future care coordination goals.”

“We formed West Florida ACO in order to improve patient care coordination and enhance health outcomes,” said Dr. Jayadeva Chowdappa, chairman and CEO of West Florida ACO LLC, which saved healthcare costs by $8.1 million, improved its quality metrics and will receive shared savings incentives. “As a primary care-centric ACO connecting independent practices across Tampa Bay, eClinicalWorks has been a partner in managing our population health. eClinicalWorks provides us with a 360 degree view of our patients’ records to help us achieve the triple aim of better care, better health at an affordable cost.”

The ACO care delivery model coordinates care between patients and members of the healthcare team with the goal of helping strengthen the physician-patient relationship. The Medicare ACO program was created by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for facilitating coordination between providers to improve the quality of care for Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) beneficiaries, improve patient satisfaction and reduce unnecessary costs. Recently recognized by Frost & Sullivan with its 2014 North America Frost & Sullivan Award for Enabling Technology Leadership and named most used system across ACO functional categories by KLAS Research, eClinicalWorks CCMR aids its ACO clients in meeting its quality measures and performance metrics.

“eClinicalWorks is at the forefront with aiding its customers through ACO and other shared savings programs, and is the only vendor delivering closed-loop analytics for better care delivery,” said Girish Navani, CEO and co-founder of eClinicalWorks. “eClinicalWorks CCMR delivers one of the most comprehensive population health management solutions along with powerful analytics and care coordination on a single platform. These ACOs are taking on an ambitious initiative in order to improve savings and care delivery. We are honored to partner them.”

eClinicalWorks CCMR helps to coordinate care for population health management. It is designed to provide visibility into a patient’s care across all settings, facilitate smooth transitions of care, engage patients and providers in preventative care, improve outcomes among populations and reduce costs. A vendor-neutral, open network securely connects ambulatory EHRs with hospital in-patient systems and payer claim feeds, including CMS, to provide cost and utilization for services delivered to patients.

About eClinicalWorks

eClinicalWorks is a privately-held leader in ambulatory healthcare IT solutions. With physicians across all 50 states using its solutions, customers include ACOs, physician practices, out-patient departments of hospitals, health centers, departments of health and convenient care clinics. Ten eClinicalWorks customers have received the prestigious HIMSS Davies Awards during the past six years, honoring excellence in electronic health record implementation. The company is second largest in the country for e-prescribing. Based in Westborough, Mass., eClinicalWorks has additional offices in New York City, Chicago, California and Georgia. For more information, please visit www.eclinicalworks.com, Facebook, Twitter or call 866-888-6929.