Electronic Health Reporter

Based on its analysis of the health data analytics market, Frost & Sullivan has recognized Optum with the 2014 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Leadership for the Optum One intelligent health platform. Optum One is a game-changing, cloud-based population health analytics tool from Optum, the health services business of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH). This comprehensive decision-support solution is exceptionally aligned with the health care marketplace’s move away from fee-for-service toward pay-for-performance, wherein reimbursement is directly tied to patient outcomes.

Optum One includes several applications that enable four core IT capabilities needed by care providers for the transition to risk-based, or fee-for-value, contracts. They are:

1. data aggregation that brings together disparate data at the individual and population levels;
2. risk stratification methods to apply to aggregated data to identify and stratify at-risk patients and care provider performance metrics;
3. care coordination to bring insights from data analysis to the point of care; and
4. patient engagement tools that help drive compliance for individuals and populations.

The Optum One platform and applications are compatible with a variety of reimbursement methods, including traditional fee-for-service arrangements as well as various new fee-for-value arrangements in accountable care organizations and patient-centered medical homes. As further proof of its flexibility, Optum One can be deployed as an end-to-end analytics solution or as modular applications that allow customers to access just the tools they need to accomplish current objectives.

“By leveraging Optum One’s advanced health data analytics capabilities, care providers can understand and engage with their patient population at a much broader and deeper level,” said Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst Nancy Fabozzi. “Optum One helps care providers access the insights needed to improve patient care by integrating claims, clinical, socio-demographic and care management data in one seamless platform.”

Care providers using Optum One can perform several retrospective and prospective analyses that enable the identification of the most feasible and effective areas for proactive intervention, particularly for chronic disease management. Optum’s solutions enable customers to build capabilities in workflow optimization, information connectivity, patient and consumer engagement, and data analytics. No other analytics vendor comes close to matching Optum’s strength in this area.

One such client is Wisconsin-based Aurora HealthCare, a 15-hospital integrated health care provider serving 90 communities.

“We’ve used Optum One in some key clinical uses, such as high-risk heart failure and COPD patients. We’ve been able to decrease admissions by 65% in that patient cohort as well as drive patients to a lower risk category,” said Dr. Sylvia Meltzer, Director of Medical Group Operations and Optimization, Aurora HealthCare

Optum offers proven leadership and deep expertise in health data analytics, and has unparalleled understanding of what it takes to help care providers successfully deploy these solutions to improve patient care and operational efficiencies. For instance, as a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) solution, it offers a quick start process that avoids costly and time-consuming implementation.

Another significant advantage is that it is completely vendor neutral and capable of working with a number of health IT solutions found in care provider settings. As a cloud-based solution, it can analyze complex and diverse data without being dependent on the presence of a data warehouse to deliver analytics. The integrated platform enables care providers to leverage predictive and clinical analytics where they have the most impact – at the point of care.

“In addition to Optum’s continual focus on internal product development, the company has successfully gained access to new markets and technologies through strategic acquisitions,” noted Fabozzi. “Optum is increasingly being viewed as the partner of choice by many emerging health IT technology vendors.”

Optum has built an outstanding reputation for the thoroughness, reliability and quality of its structured and unstructured data sets. These data are derived from numerous sources, such as clinical data (clinician notes, lab results, prescriptions and procedure data) from nearly 50 million patients as well as 20 years of longitudinal claims data.

Optum owes its continued success to its visionary growth strategy, commitment to technology innovation, coordinated approach to providing solutions that align with changing industry dynamics, and exceptional customer value.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated product and implementation excellence to increase market share. The award recognizes the vision alignment, process design and operational efficiency as well as the technological sophistication and favorable culture within the company. It also lauds the value, reliability and quality of the product/service and its relevance to the needs of the industry in terms of value and design.

Frost & Sullivan’s Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for outstanding achievement in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research.

About Optum

Optum is a leading information and technology-enabled health services business dedicated to helping make the health system work better for everyone. With more than 81,000 people worldwide, Optum delivers intelligent, integrated solutions that help to modernize the health system and improve overall population health. Optum is part of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH).

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today’s market participants.

Our “Growth Partnership” supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure.

• The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation.
• The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices.

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