AAs HCI Senior Contributing Editor David Raths noted in his September 8 report, a recent survey of 69 accountable care organizations (ACOs) by the eHealth Initiative and Premier, Inc. found that ACOs continue to struggle with accessing data from outside their organizations, and with integrating data from disparate sources.

 

What is needed: “a really good, roll-up-your-sleeves collaboration among all stakeholder parties, that will help the leaders of some ACOs become the most successful.”

This report describes what we have experienced. In the fee-for-service payment method, data is siloed and there is no pressing business or financial incentive for data sharing let alone collaboration between providers that simply submit their bill and report and move on down the road.

Shared risk models such as ACOs require Meaningful Collaboration between medical stakeholders to limit redundant costs, increase efficiency of treatment and to decide as a stakeholder group what is most cost effective treatment for the specific patient. In this model, the patient, medical providers, payors and regulators all share risk and must collaborate in creating and delivering the most cost effective treatment.

Healthcare needs collaboration tools including EMR vendor independent collaboration platforms that allow all medical stakeholders to share information held in different information systems as well as HIPAA compliant, easily accessible collaboration platform that is patient and medical provider centric rather than EMR centric. This is the Vision of Meaningful Collaboration project.

CCongressional Affairs House Passes 21st Century Cures Act, includes Interoperability, Patient ID Provisions Key Takeaway: On Friday, the House passed the 21st Century Cures Act (HR 6), which in addition to increase NIH funding by $8.5 billion, included a number of EHR and health information exchange directives.

Source: Washington Debrief: House Passes 21st Century Cures Act, Includes Interoperability, Patient ID Provisions

Great steps forward from Congress in support of interoperability using both incentive funds to develop solutions to the current obstacles to sharing of healthcare information and providing penalties for medical entities that engage in blocking of this exchange. The Congressional “carrot and stick” approach provides support for medical innovators to design solutions and financial penalties for entities that block the free exchange of health information between stakeholders.

Efficient healthcare practice also requires methods for a patient’s medical providers within separate information systems to collaborate. A Healthcare Collaboration Platform could allow stakeholders to collaborate within a vendor agnostic work space in a manner very similar to the progress notes section of old hospital chart. Providers, payors, patients, and regulators could contribute clinically pertinent content from a variety of health information sources to a Federated record and collaborate rather than simply exchanging content through interoperability chains. Medical decision making could be expedited and duplication of services could be reduced through this Meaningful Collaboration between medical providers.

Congratulations to Congress for laying the groundwork for future healthcare innovation.

Douglas K Smith MD, CPHIMS