Tag: Abhinav Shashank

The Right Population Health Analytics to Transform the Patient Experience

By Abhinav Shashank, co-founder and president, Innovaccer.

Abhinav Shashank
Abhinav Shashank

Consider a situation where healthcare is not just an industry term — a situation where EHRs are not an integral part of physicians schedule but just a support to providing care. All considered, imagine a situation where patient-centric care actually involves the patient, and patient engagement is not just a buzzword but a reality. Unfortunately, all these imaginations were supposed to be a reality, but still, healthcare managers and organizations are struggling with the problems such as the lack of patients’ adherence to medication, varying trends in the population health, and a lot more. Patient population, nowadays, expect the same on-demand delivery convenience from the healthcare organizations as they get from the other companies, like Netflix.

Why is Patient Engagement the Core of Providing Patient-centric Care?

To understand the value of the patient in the entire care continuum, let us take an example. Consider a patient, Marcus, who works at an IT firm and is affiliated to a Commercial ACO in his county. Marcus is a 65-year-old male suffering from comorbidities like Type 1 Diabetes, and diabetic retinopathy. He is at constant risk of sporadic elevated blood pressure.

In the year 2016, Marcus visited the ED approximately five times. Considering the situation, his primary care physician referred him to a specialist and prepared a schedule comprising at least two monthly visits.

The year 2017 started with a lot of workload for him at his firm, and he was unable to keep up with the prescribed schedule. Because of improper communication between his PCP and him, his physician was not able to keep track of Marcus’s health. As a result, the ED utilization rate for Marcus increased from five times to nine times. Because of enhanced stress and improper quality of care, the sporadic episodes of elevated blood pressure turned into a constant problem of hypertension. Also, the overall cost of care for Marcus increased drastically.

Challenges in Achieving True Patient Engagement

Patient engagement, in itself, is not as simple as ABC. It is not just bringing patients in the cycle of care continuum but enhancing the patient’s skills, ability, knowledge, and most importantly, willingness to participate in the task of managing his own care. The concept of providing care with “engaged patients” sounds great theoretically, but it is not that smooth sailing. According to a survey, nearly 87 percent of the patient population believes that communication with their doctor apart from their scheduled appointments is really important.

The major flaw is the lack of awareness among the patients regarding their care procedures. Many patients are ignorant of the clinical processes which a physician follows, and they might miss out on major health details. With no actual knowledge of the disease symptoms, patients might not report to their physicians which might lead to reduced patient engagement, not to mention the increased risk of developing a chronic disease.

Care teams play a vital role in engaging the patients through regular follow-ups. Irregular and fragmented workflows of care managers and lack of personalization might lead to the generation of ineffective care plans for the patients. Reduction in patient engagement could also be the result of under utilization of technologies to analyze the massive amount of patient data that care managers have at their disposal. Through building more personalized care plans, patients can be engaged at a more grass-roots level.

Driving Effective Engagements through Value-based Care

Predictive population health analytics is the answer to nearly every problem linked with patient engagement. Advanced predictive analytics tools will help in dealing with the problems of disparate data systems and can pinpoint the exact area on which healthcare organizations can focus. Leveraging the insights obtained by data analytics, care teams can prepare the statistical models to prioritize each patient and can take necessary measures to engage patients in the process of decision-making. Understanding the patients’ habits by the care teams increases the chances of preparing personalized care plans for them and enhancing the level of patient satisfaction.

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The ABC of Physician Engagement and Why Point-of-Care Support Is Needed for Physicians

Guest post by Abhinav Shashank, CEO, Innovaccer.

Abhinav Shashank
Abhinav Shashank

In January 2015, the Department of Health and Human Services set a goal to tie 50 percent of the Medicare payments to value or quality by 2018. This transition has put physicians on the frontlines of healthcare, as they play a major role in the value-based roadmap of an organization.

However, on the downside, this shift is causing substantial physician burnout — PCPs are spending more than 50 percent of their workday in the EHR doing documentation, order entry, billing, and coding, instead of spending time with their patients. There is a need to reduce physician’s IT usage by giving them easy and quick access to actionable information such as care-, and coding- gaps, thereby allowing physicians to focus on things that matter most – delivery and improvement of care.

Regardless of how many patients physicians see per day, they have to put in an equal, if not more number of hours in front of the EHRs for logging in every single detail. Physicians are likely very interested in quality care and making the care processes efficient; it is important to understand the implications that would be created on their reimbursements with a solution that mitigates IT usage burnout. Physicians should automatically be updated instead of having to inquire about information they need at any given moment as it might be disengaging. It is possible to engage physicians so that they can take forward the quality improvement efforts.

Alternative Physician engagement methodologies and their adoption

Making improvements to the healthcare system are the top of the agenda but how does the current scenario of physician engagement compare to this? Addressing the problem of physician burnout, several methods for engaging physicians have surfaced over the past few years:

  Adaptability Cost Outcome
Print / Fax PVP High Low Medium
Push data back in EMR High High High
Mobile App Medium in young physicians
Low in older physicians
Medium Medium
Another Web Portal Very Low Medium Low

All of these methods are sub-optimal – either they are labor-intensive, or costly to implement, or require physicians to leave the EHR and go to another portal, thus decreasing the physician adoption rates. It is critical to engage physicians in a timely and effective manner to bring information transparency across the network and allow for prompt identification of low-quality care outcomes and unnecessarily high-cost events.

The solution: Engaging physicians with point of support for smarter and holistic care

Addressing above limitations, there is a dire need for a smart point-of-care support for physicians that is automated, easy to implement, and user-friendly. A support system that operates right besides EHR, pinpoints and surfaces only relevant insights, including care gaps and risk factors, which will help physicians right at the point of care without being overloaded with too much information.

Providing precise insights

Physicians require a solution that pops up just the precise insights like care gaps and risk factors to assist them in working with the patient within the EHR at the point of care. Moreover, creating a holistic picture of patients remains highly essential for physicians, however, it is still a challenge because of siloed data storage platforms in healthcare. This lack of a 360-degree view for every patient is a major barrier to collaborative and coordinated care efforts. These challenges can be addressed by integrating various patient-specific datasets, including clinical and claims and surfacing key insights on the physician’s screen in nearly real-time.

Personalizing patient interactions

Almost 80 percent of healthcare data is unstructured, and thus, to create impact at scale, physicians need pioneering analytic capabilities. For example, if a patient has visited the ED three times in the past two months, he needs to be tagged as a ‘frequent ED visitor.’ Giving physicians access to this information will guide them to revisit and optimize their care-programs for this patient such that the patient’s ED visits go down, which would further translate into decreased overall spend for the network.

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10 Things You Can Expect From Healthcare In 2018

Guest post by Abhinav Shashank, CEO, Innovaccer.

Abhinav Shashank
Abhinav Shashank

With 2017 in the rear-view mirror, it is time to look forward to 2018 and how healthcare will evolve in this year. The last year has been an eventful one for healthcare, from the uproar in healthcare regulations to potential mega-mergers. Needless to say, it’s a time of transition, and healthcare is in a very fluid state- evolving and expanding. There are certainly going to be new ways to keep healthcare providers and health IT pros stay engaged and excited, and here are our top 10 picks:

The future of the GOP Healthcare bill

The Republican healthcare reform bill gained immense traction this year. In their third attempt at putting a healthcare bill forward, the senators and the White House officials have been working round the clock to gather up votes, but somehow, the reservations persist. The lawmakers have insisted that Americans would not lose their vital insurance protections under their bill, including the guarantee that the plan would protect those with preexisting conditions. However, as it so happens, even these plans have been put to rest. Perhaps sometime in 2018, the GOP may pass a budget setting up reconciliation for tax reform, and then pass tax reform. Then, they would pass a budget setting up reconciliation for Obamacare repeal, and then pass that- it all remains to be seen.

The ongoing shift to value from volume

Despite speculations, healthcare providers, as well as CMS have pushed for more value-based care and payments tied to quality, but it’s been going slow. Although providers have been slightly resistant to take on risk, they do recognize the potential to contain costs and improve quality of care over value-based contracts. And perhaps as data assumes a central role in healthcare, the increasing availability of data and smarter integration of disconnected data systems will make the transition easier and scalable. Notably, with a $3.3 trillion healthcare expenditure this year, there has been slow down the cost growth. 2018 is expected to be much more impactful as it builds on the strong foundation.

Big data and analytics translating data into real health outcomes

Big data and analytics have always brought significant advancements in making healthcare technology-driven. With the help of big data and smart analytics, we are at a point in healthcare we can make a near-certain prediction about possible complications a patient can face, their possible readmission, and the outcomes of a care plan devised for them. Not only it could translate to better health outcomes for the patients, it could also make a difference in improving reimbursements and regulatory compliance.

Blockchain-based systems

Blockchain could arguably be one of the most disruptive technologies in healthcare. It is already being considered as a solution to healthcare’s longstanding challenge of interoperability and data exchange. Bringing blockchain-based systems will definitely require some changes from the ground up, but 2018 will have a glimpse of by innovation centered around blockchain and how it can enhance healthcare data exchange and ensure security.

AI and IoT taking on a central role

2018 can witness a good amount of investment from healthcare leaders in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things. There is going to be a considerable advancement in technology, making the use of technology crucial in healthcare and assist an already unbalanced workforce. AI and IoT will not only prove instrumental in enhancing accuracy in clinical insights, and security, but could also be fruitful in reducing manual redundancy and ensuring fewer errors as we transition to a world of quality in care.

Digital health interventions and virtual care to improve access and treatment

In December 2016, many were suggesting that wearables were dead. Today, wearables are becoming one of the most sought-after innovation when it comes to digital health. And, the market is quickly diversifying as clinical wearables gain importance and as several renowned organizations integrate with each other. Not only wearables- there are several apps and biosensors that can assist providers with remotely tracking patient health, engage patients, interact with them, and streamline care operations. As technology becomes central to healthcare, 2018 will be the year when these apps and wearables boost the patient-physician interaction.

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The Foundation To Build An Interoperable Ecosystem: APIs

Abhinav Shashank
Abhinav Shashank

Guest post by Abhinav Shashank, CEO, Innovaccer.

Have you ever thought how giant enterprises like Facebook, Google and Microsoft have harnessed big data technology so spectacularly well? These consumer-centric industries are continuing to succeed at a global level. Do you know what they all have in common? APIs.

Short for “application programming interfaces,” APIs are like connectors that allow you to access information on your application or software. It’s basically how two softwares talk. APIs are the not-so new big thing in the tech sphere and to make a headway into delivering top-notch quality care, it’s high time we embraced them for a better tomorrow.

Constraints in healthcare today

Given the complex nature of modern day healthcare data exchange, providers are themselves held back from tapping the full potential of the available data and utilizing it to drive the best possible outcomes.

Problems arise in the very initial steps of care delivery. Accessing or exchanging the medical information of any patient who reaches a facility is a most basic requirement that should be fulfilled at the very outset of care. But, the slow and long-drawn fragmented process of data exchange, siloed nature of data sets and lack of interoperability hinders a smooth transfer of information from one provider to another.

How then is it possible to carry out comprehensive care for a patient with only partial information about the patient? How about if, the traditional and complex process of data exchange were to be replaced with a simpler, easier and faster technology.

In a world where API is a reality, sluggish data integration and exchange ought to be passé.

Simple, modular and interactive

These efficient little elves (techie companies prefer to call them APIs) make things way simpler on the surface — quite literally! While using a low-maintenance infrastructure and only a few lines of code, these elves will open that door for you to be able to engage and interact with your patients at large.

Why should healthcare take to APIs?

Sweeping changes and new data sources are continually making their way into healthcare and with that there is an ever-growing need among healthcare organizations to share information. Patients, as they become aware of their health status, too are demanding greater access to their health information. Below are some pointers laying out why APIs are a better alternative than existing means like static databases for exchanging health data:

Keeping technicalities aside, let me tell you that standardization is simpler with APIs and that is a huge plus point because it’s easier to process information when everyone speaks the same language. True, EMRs also work through APIs, however, open APIs can enable you to use whatever type of data on whichever device. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have your lab results and prescriptions appear on your phone, your vitals clear on the screen and your appointments listed on your calendar? APIs enable this and a lot more.

All that’s great. But what’s in it for the providers?

By bringing APIs into the fold, providers can make use of interfaces that are uniquely designed for their systems, helping them attain better clinical decision making.

They can use APIs to build their own custom apps and can have vital information about health conditions, medications, surgeries, and other details for use in their own applications or platforms.

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The Future of Healthcare with 100 Percent Interoperability

Guest post by Abhinav Shashank, CEO and co-founder, Innovaccer.

Abhinav Shashank
Abhinav Shashank

A personal health record of any patient, whether it is an aging parent, a spouse or a child with a chronic illness, contains a summary of medications, lab results, visit notes, billing information and more, and interoperability makes it easy to manage all these files and documents with just a few clicks.

Every form of health data makes an entry in an EHR today thanks to the shift towards a digitized healthcare in U.S. Although this has made data entry, storage, retrieval and exchange easier, it has brought with it certain challenges. Integrating and utilizing EHRs is the first baby step; however, if we are to overcome all the hurdles then achieving 100 percent EHR interoperability is the summit where we are yet to reach.

Physicians want to optimize the full potential and promise of EHRs for the simple reason that improved communication between systems will lead to a better and enhanced care. Once all the systems in use nationwide are connected and interacting with each other, patients will find it easier to seek a second opinion as their health information will reach the physician in a matter of seconds.

How interoperability exists today

Today, various interoperability standards have developed for the sake of continuous improvement in this realm. Health Level Seven (HL7) has produced the likes of HL7v2, HL7v3, and the latest FHIR as competent standards that exist in the industry for better streamlining of documentation and care coordination. With the help of FHIR, physicians can access health data on their mobile phones through various API (Application Programming Interface) functions that FHIR supports. This ease of access to complete and accurate patient data, in due course, helps in many ways. As providers and health coaches work together on improving the health of people, it also significant for them to be able to access accurate data from sources other than EHRs. Apart from EHRs, HIEs have popped up in various places that allow for the smooth flow of data across the health care network.

Ways in which interoperability facilitates healthcare

Physicians can easily access and share medical information with their patients and perform their tasks with greater efficiency. This could be done by increasing the efficiency of monitoring chronic diseases. Besides saving time and labor cost, physicians and patients with access to interoperable health information can benefit from higher-quality patient outcomes. Interoperable EHRs carry the potential of giving easy and ongoing access to patient’s health records to the physician. For a doctor to have an updated and detailed medical history of his patient cannot just be live-saving, it will mainly help those people who are always on the move. This will empower an individual to move across the continuum of care seamlessly with their clinical record.

Doing more with less

As value-based care and reimbursements stepped into healthcare, the US managed to turn the tide towards a more qualitative and equitable delivery of care. This has made physicians more responsible for better patient health outcomes than ever before. To manage hospital readmission and managed care plans, physicians need to have as much patient information as possible at hand at all times. This is where interoperability comes into play by aggregating and relaying data from disparate regions and bringing it onto a single platform.

For a secure data exchange to take place amongst healthcare organizations and patients, it’s important that both parties are willing and equally involved in the sharing process. This will inevitably lead to shared decision making apart from the fact that the physician will be able to make quick and informed decisions. The ultimate aim is to have a complete understanding of the health status of patients and helping them navigate effectively in their health journey for a better patient experience.

Patient-centric interoperability is the direction in which healthcare is slowly moving. There’s so much that we can do with the availability of data. Ongoing monitoring of patient data can better facilitate the ongoing management of that patient’s health and the physician can intervene where necessary. With this, patients too can track their progress and work towards improving their health hand-in-hand with the physicians.

 Challenges that interoperability is yet to solve

 One of the issues that interoperability is dealing with today is the vast and disjointed patient data that exists in regional HIEs and independent, transactional databases like EHRs. Along with this, patient privacy concerns and consent are other risk factors that need to be considered when diving through protected health information data. Lack of a common standard, state policy rules, workflow and policy difference and the need for incentives are some barriers in the way of achieving 100 percent interoperability.

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Risk Adjustment 101: Ignoring these Could Cost You Millions

Guest post by Abhinav Shashank, CEO and co-founder, Innovaccer.

Abhinav Shashank
Abhinav Shashank

For a long time, healthcare insurance companies used to overlook people who were likely to be high-cost. As the landscape changed with new regulations, insurance providers have started offering new policies in the individual market without identifying any pre-existing conditions while enquiring about their health status. Even so, there have been many loopholes, and every administration has and continues to aim at minimizing these gaps. The one good answer thus far: risk adjustment.

What is risk adjustment?

Risk adjustment over the years has become a key mechanism used in healthcare to predict the costs incurred and ensure appropriate payments for Medicare Advantage plans, Part D plans, and health plans. Historically, it was only used in Medicaid and Medicare but lately has been an actuarial tool to ensure that health insurance plans have adequate funding and no financial hindrance in providing care to high-risk, high-need patients. Insurance companies and their plans are compared on the basis of quality and services they offer, providing a strong foundation to value-based purchasing.

Why is risk adjustment so important?

Risk adjustment advocates fair payments to health insurance plans by judging them on their efficiency and encouraging the provision of high-quality care. Beyond that, here’s why risk adjustment is important:

How is risk adjustment used in healthcare?

Healthcare risk adjustment methodologies can be used to account for changes in severity and case mixes for patients over time. Risk adjustment has been critical in reducing “cherry picking” among health plans. Dimensions of risk in care can broadly be categorized into three categories:

It’s important to ensure that by providing incentives to enroll high-cost individuals, there are necessary resources available to provide efficient and effective treatment to the relatively healthy population without overcompensation. The methodology used to risk-adjust premiums varies on the following:

On the macro level, unless the state combines its individual and small group markets, separate risk adjustment systems operate in each market. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), developed a risk adjustment methodology, where individual risk scores are assigned to each enrollee. The diagnoses are grouped into a Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) and are assigned a numerical value which is averaged to calculate the plan’s average risk score. Payments and charges are calculated by comparing each plan’s average risk score to a baseline premium.

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How Are EHRs Eating Up Physicians’ Time?

Guest post by Abhinav Shashank, CEO and co-founder, Innovaccer.

Abhinav Shashank
Abhinav Shashank

Time is money, an adage the world follows. When providers realized paper medical records were time-consuming, Electronic Health Records were developed to make things streamlined. Early EHRs were only meant to capture basic clinical information, and over the time EHRs have taken the form of a digital version of paper medical records. In an industry as dynamic and as focused on value as healthcare, it’s not feasible to have physicians spend almost half their time on EHRs.

Challenges physicians face with EHRs

EHRs, in their current state, not only consume a lot of physicians’ time, but they also draw their attention away from their direct interactions with patients. Some of the several significant challenges physicians face are:

 Why can’t we do away with EHRs?

While EHRs are not without their own set of challenges, their implementation was necessary, and that still holds true. Only recently, under the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), providers have started to make an effort to enhance value in the care they deliver and the meaningful use of EHRs has been included in MIPS with other substantial quality reporting initiatives. Besides that, there are many offerings of EHRs:

EHR Optimization: Boosting your EHRs

EHR optimization is the process of enhancing and refining the operations of an already installed EHR, to enhance clinical productivity and efficiency. As more and more practices have begun the push for value-based reimbursement, they are demanding more integrated and efficient EHRs.

Opportunities for EHR optimization vary for every practice and range from simple to complex. However, the primary objective of every optimization is reducing the time consumed. Here are some ways healthcare IT platforms can optimize time spent on EHRs for improved patient outcomes:

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Why is Data the Medicine to Cure Modern Healthcare?

Guest post by Abhinav Shashank, CEO and co-founder, Innovaccer.

Abhinav Shashank
Abhinav Shashank

The world of healthcare analytics is vast and can encompass a wide range of data that has the incredible potential to tell stories about health and healthcare delivery: right from individual patients to entire populations. Having numbers and an easy-to-use visualization at hand gives providers and caregivers the power to not only look into the lives of individual patients but also track the ongoing activities in their organizations. Simply showing visualizations are not enough and to fully understand their value, healthcare organizations have to take a few steps beyond basic graphs.

The Case for Data Visualization

In the words of Edward O. Wilson, the father or social biology:

“You teach me, I forget.
You show me, I remember.
You involve me, I understand.”

There are many disparate data sources healthcare providers have to deal with: EHRs, departmental data, claims data, resource utilization, administrative data, etc. Consolidating the data and spreading it out in a visually adaptive manner offers a more agile approach to managing complex population health data.

Data visualization was developed with the aim to make it easier to gain actionable insights from volumes of information and work on improving health programs, clinical healthcare delivery, and post-episode care management. Visualization provides real value in learning from disparate data sources, finding outliers, bringing out hidden trends out on the front, and delivering better health outcomes.

Streamlining Different Data Sources into a Single Source of Truth

Since the data pertaining to a patient’s health comes in from various sources, it is vital to pool all the data sets and obtain an aggregated, standard format of data every authorized person can view and manipulate.

Data in the healthcare industry can broadly be categorized into two sources:

Fine-tuning Real-Time Visualization

The amount of data healthcare institutions aggregate is enormous: by 2012, it was estimated to be a whopping 150 exabytes (150 million * million * million) and is growing at a rate of 48 percent per year. As the volume grows, healthcare organizations need state-of-the-art, real-time analytical capabilities to improve the care quality and its effectiveness. Real-time analytics can turn the tables in ways more than one:

Since data visualization holds great advantage to understand the going-ons in the organization in real-time, here are some key elements that count as best practices for data visualization:

Wrap-up with Healthcare IT

By leveraging healthcare IT, organizations can have their hands on simple but effective visualization and take a look at additional, important information that might have been difficult to notice in tabular format. Here are some ways healthcare IT can drive real-time data visualization to success:

Driving Value with Visualization

With healthcare IT now an integral part of the value-based care system, there is little doubt that convenient, real-time data visualization will be heavily used to achieve positive health outcomes. Combining real-time data with advanced analytics will completely reshape how healthcare IT can improve clinical and operational outcomes. Once physicians move away from long, incomprehensible data flows, and find an alternative that helps them instinctively read, isolate, and act upon the insights, only then can we be one step closer to a data-driven value-based care.