The Collaborative Forum

In May, I first wrote a post that discussed the Beacon Community Program, the new program from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) that’s designed to actually encourage innovation to transform and improve healthcare delivery in this country.

As part of the program, the ONC has allocated $235 million to develop cooperative agreements with communities to build and strengthen their health IT infrastructure and health information exchange capabilities. Looking for measurable improvements in health care quality, safety, efficiency and population health, the ONC is funding 17 of these awards to different communities across the country.

The challenge with past chronic care management pilots/demonstrations is that even with the best of intentions, the stringent design and methodology actually stifled innovation and destined many of these projects to fail. However, through the advanced use of IT the Beacon Communities are set to tackle specific goals of improving health care and population health status.

Next week, in partnership with the Care Continuum Alliance, Pharos Innovations is presenting a webinar on Wednesday, October 26, at 1 PM, EDT that carefully discusses and considers the Beacon Community Program. As the newly elected Chair of the Government Affairs Committee of the Care Continuum Alliance, I am honored to be participating in this webinar.   Read the rest of this entry →

Pharos Innovations is a long standing and proud member of the Disease Management Association of America, which as of today, ceases to exist as the DMAA. Today, the organization has changed its name to the Care Continuum Alliance (CCA) to better align its name with its ongoing work on behalf of organizations and individuals that provide healthcare at all stages of well-being.

The organization’s decision to change its name away from one that focuses on disease management reflects our industry’s evolution toward care across the continuum of health. This is a move away from a disease focus to a more comprehensive, patient-focused approach. Read the rest of this entry →

Very recently, I wrote about remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems and how they are gaining traction with healthcare payers, such as insurance companies.  Historically, health plans have under-invested in optimizing the management of medical expenses, choosing instead to maximize rates where possible. As a result, they’ve experienced high medical losses and have triggered financial pressure and constraints on revenue growth.

Health plans can and are beginning to consistently and sustainably improve outcomes and reduce medical losses by monitoring the daily status of at-risk members through RPM. We’ve just released the results of an evaluation of a large national Medicare Advantage plan that partnered with Pharos Innovations to improve the hospitalization costs in their population. The results speak directly to why RPM systems like  Tel-Assurance can play a key role in our healthcare system going forward.

Nationally, 10% to 14% of Medicare Advantage members have heart failure (HF), and they account for 15% of Medicare Advantage plan hospitalizations. Additionally, 25% of those hospitalized are readmitted within 30 days. This is the cycle that RPM can break.

The evaluation results just released covered Medicare Advantage members for a 17-month period from January 1, 2008 to May 31, 2009. The HF cohort experienced 1,639 admissions per 1,000 during the 12-month baseline period.  A matched member cohort studied simultaneously experienced no decrease compared to the baseline rate.  However, during the same period, Tel-Assurance enrollees experienced an all cause hospital admission rate of only 351 per 1,000, a 79% decrease compared to the baseline period. Read the rest of this entry →