Industry Insight

Report Reveals Keys to Sustainable HIEs

IDC Health Insights recently released a new report, “Best Practices: Establishing Sustainable Health Information Exchange,” to educate healthcare organizations on best practices for establishing enterprise or community health information exchanges (HIEs). While many HIEs have attempted to become sustainable, financially viable entities, only some have succeeded. The new report provides a framework for establishing a new HIE based on keen insight from successful early adopters.

Based on interviews with nearly 50 executives from enterprise, regional, and statewide HIE organizations, the best practices described in the report are arranged by the major components of an HIE deployment: stakeholder engagement, communications, data governance, HIE solution selection, project management and implementation, EHR deployment, clinical utilization, privacy and security, and funding and sustainability. As a first step, IDC Health Insights emphasizes that healthcare organizations should focus on understanding the clinical, business, and technical requirements of the HIE before identifying potential solutions and conducting a vendor search.

Additional key findings include the following:

• As healthcare organizations evolve toward accountable care, they will need to deploy HIE capabilities to facilitate patient-centric care collaboration.

• Interoperability is a transformation project. HIEs need to work closely with stakeholders and communicate well to obtain their trust, which will be essential for a successful outcome.

• HIEs should anticipate that resolving privacy and security issues take longer than resolving technology issues. As such, organizations should not delay the planning and implementation process if they want to maximize meaningful EHR-use incentives.

"Too many HIEs have relied on the ‘build and they will come’ strategy. Instead, HIEs must plan for sustainability from the very beginning," says Lynne A. Dunbrack, program director for IDC Health Insights. "If the HIE will not be sustainable after the initial funding, then careful consideration should be given to whether to launch the HIE in the first place."

— Source: IDC Health Insights

 

UASI Names New Director of CDI Services

United Audit Systems, Inc (UASI) has hired Teresa Engel, RN, CCS, as director of clinical documentation improvement (CDI) services.

Engel will be responsible for the implementation and project management of UASI’s clinical documentation services, including CDI program development, CDI evaluation and training, case mix index analysis, and CDI supplemental staffing. UASI’s CDI services focus on assisting clients with a real-time process by which physicians are queried prior to discharge (in accordance with regulatory guidelines). This concurrent process facilitates accuracy and allows the coder to assign the true severity and risk level of the patient, in turn having a positive impact on many of the critical indicators and components of hospital reimbursement, including compliance, case mix index, and Medicare-severity diagnosis-related group assignment. These metrics then correlate to increased accuracy with hospital and physician scorecards with internal and external profiling (eg, government and commercial payers, HealthGrades, Leapfrog).

Engel joins UASI after holding senior-level roles related to the delivery of clinical documentation management programs with The Claro Group, KPMG, and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. Her experience includes both clinical and revenue cycle expertise and recently obtained her ICD-10-CM/PCS training certification.

— Source: United Audit Systems, Inc

 

International EPR Market Shows Promising Growth Opportunities

Electronic patient record (EPR) buying and selling energy outside North America is still developing for most countries, with a majority of activity in Asia, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom, according to the KLAS report "International EPR Market 2012: Multinational Vendor Footprints." The research firm spoke to hundreds of international providers in their new report mapping EPR market share for multinational vendors. The study looked for vendors with an EPR solution live in more than two countries.

"It's still an upcoming market,” says report author Doug Tolley. “This project has been almost two years in development, and we keep being surprised by what we find. There are only about 3,000 hospitals outside the USA with an EPR from a commercial vendor. Without the kind of government incentives that exist in the USA, it's been a slower build for most countries."

The study also said adoption is still shallow, with relatively few sites doing deep clinical adoption. Allscripts, Cambio, Cerner, Epic, MEDITECH, and Siemens are the only commercial vendors with HIMSS stage 6 or 7 hospitals outside the United States.

Vendors were broken into three tiers based on the number of countries and EPR sites contracted. Top-tier vendors were Siemens, InterSystems, Cerner, MEDITECH, and CSC/iSOFT. The second level of vendors included Alert, Agfa, Allscripts, and McKesson. Vendors with the smallest breadth were GE, Cambio, Epic, and IMS.

Cerner, MEDITECH, and Siemens were the only vendors with solutions in every region of the world. Epic, one of the largest and fastest-growing EPR vendors in the United States, is currently in only three countries outside this country.

— Source: KLAS

 

GSMA Predicts mHealth Market to Be Worth $23 Billion by 2017

The GSMA recently announced that mobile technology will play a significant role in the provision of healthcare services globally and predicts the growth of the mobile health (mHealth) market will lead to a revenue opportunity worth $23 billion by 2017. The findings are from a new report, “Touching Lives Through Mobile Health: Assessment of the Global Market Opportunity,” conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the GSMA, which looks at the key challenges the healthcare industry is facing worldwide and the opportunity mobile technology provides in overcoming these challenges.

The report suggests that in spite of the advancements in medical technologies and a general increase in income levels, healthcare continues to pose challenges of affordability, complexity, and access across the world. In contrast, mobile access is almost ubiquitous. With the increasing penetration of smartphones and new and innovative connected devices and the proliferation of mobile broadband networks and services worldwide, mobile technology will play a far greater role in healthcare in both developed and developing countries in the future.

In terms of the market opportunity, the research found that the provision of pervasive mHealth services and applications worldwide could provide mobile operators with revenues worth approximately $11.5 billion by 2017. Device vendors could benefit from a revenue opportunity of $6.6 billion, content and application providers $2.6 billion, and healthcare providers $2.4 billion by 2017.

Europe would become the largest mHealth region by 2017 with revenues of $6.9 billion, followed by Asia Pacific with $6.8 billion, North America with $6.5 billion, Latin America with $1.6 billion, and Africa with $1.2 billion. In terms of individual countries, the United States could benefit from revenues of $5.9 billion, accounting for one-quarter of the global mHealth market by 2017, and revenues in China and Japan could reach $2.5 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively.

To enable this opportunity, however, governments, regulators, and healthcare providers need to work with mobile operators and organizations in the broader mHealth ecosystem, including device vendors and content and application players, to support the rollout and adoption of new mHealth services. This includes the following key factors:

• Government support: Only when governments worldwide embrace constructive policy agendas for mHealth will the market start to achieve its potential and scale rapidly. Governments should take steps to adopt the concept of mHealth as an effective way to improve access to and affordability of healthcare. This includes encouraging the use of mHealth services by public healthcare providers and incentivizing private providers to deliver mHealth services.

• Regulatory support: Regulators need to proactively address the issues that currently limit the growth of mHealth services, certification, interoperability, and standardization.

• Healthcare industry acceptance: Clear benefit studies from key players in the mHealth ecosystem as well as government support are vital to driving acceptance in the medical profession.

• User adoption: Widespread user adoption will help drive the exponential growth and market opportunity for mHealth. This will be supported by recommendations from medical professionals, overall service affordability, and widespread availability of content and devices.

Monitoring services, such as those for chronic disease management, will account for 65% of the market ($15 billion) by 2017. One example is T-Mobile’s CardioMessenger Service that offers remote cardiac monitoring for patients in Germany.

Diagnostic services will be the second-largest segment, comprising 15% of the global mHealth market ($3.4 billion). This includes mobile telemedicine and health call centers that allow those in isolated areas to connect with healthcare professionals, such as the Telenor Teledoctor service in Pakistan, which offers 24/7 access to qualified physicians.

Treatment services will be the third-largest revenue opportunity at 10% of the overall market ($2.3 billion). Current examples include services that ensure patients adhere to treatment schedules, such as Vitality Glow Caps that remind users via SMS and through calls that they should take their medication.

— Source: GSMA