Integrated Telehealth
Predictive analytics will fuel telehealth adoption
By Nesim Bildirici, President and CEO, AMC Health
The march toward a value-based healthcare system is increasing recognition that the home must become the third locus of care. The good news is that telehealth capabilities are up to the challenge.
A growing body of research demonstrates that remote patient monitoring reduces readmissions and lowers multiple risk factors for patients with chronic diseases, and how the right program, matched to the right patient, can go beyond patient engagement to patient activation.
Although we’ve made great strides in providing turnkey telehealth solutions for a wide variety of clinical applications, the market is demanding evidence-based guidelines on how to thread these solutions into standard practice. These guidelines leverage advanced analytics that provide clinical decision-support tools for use with remote monitoring data, enable better patient selection and determine optimal telehealth interventions by clinical profile. Machine learning draws on multiple data sources, including: remote biometric readings, self-reported symptom and behavior information, medication adherence, sleep quality, movement patterns around the home, and EHR and claims data. These improved analytics will illuminate who the best candidates are for different telehealth programs, which remote patient monitoring data elements and patterns are useful in detecting problems upstream of adverse events and how this data is best embedded into existing care management workflows to facilitate more proactive disease management.
These analytics will improve over time, because they are developed as “genetic” models that become smarter as more data is fed into them. These tools will help care managers do an even better job of stratifying risk and managing resources, making it easier to deliver the right care, to the right patient, at the right time.
Population Health
Blessing Hospital goes all in on Allscripts
Blessing Hospital, a not-for-profit, full-service hospital based in Quincy, IL, is leveraging its Allscripts investment with an additional suite of Allscripts solutions to optimize financial performance and manage the critical shift toward accountable, value-based care and population health management.
Blessing, which has provided care for Quincy and its surrounding community since 1875, has been using Allscripts Sunrise Clinicals for 10 years. The organization will now deploy the Allscripts dbMotion population health management solution, which integrates discrete patient data from qualifying diverse care settings (regardless of IT supplier) into a single patient record and into the provider workflow – all in real time and to the point of care. Blessing will also deploy Allscripts Sunrise Financial Manager (SFM) to capture revenue, improve margins and drive efficiency throughout the hospital’s multi-facility system, which includes Blessing Hospital, Illini Community Hospital, Blessing Physician Services, Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing, The Blessing Foundation and Denman Services, Inc. The SFM financial management solution manages revenue in an integrated way across the enterprise. It can assist the organization in addressing constantly changing, applicable regulations and payment models. SFM is built on the Allscripts Sunrise Clinicals platform and natively integrated with Allscripts Sunrise Clinicals.
Blessing has also chosen the Allscripts FollowMyHealth patient engagement solution, which provides tools to help the organization meet certain Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements and empower patients to become partners in their health and wellness. Allscripts FollowMyHealth enables patients to manage their health online 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and contains functionality that allows them to view test results, refill prescriptions, request appointments, pay bills, fill out forms before appointments and communicate with their doctors.
Lastly, Blessing will deploy Allscripts Homecare, which provides analytical tools (pictured) that can drive better patient care across post-acute settings with integrated management of complex business demands and patient care needs. This easy-to-use solution aims to help elevate clinician productivity and reduce hospital readmissions, all while improving outcomes.
Big Data
Care Innovations, Caradigm tag team for patient engagement
Intel-GE Care Innovations and Caradigm are partnering to expand the current marketplace offerings for patient engagement. The companies plan to leverage Care Innovations’ solutions for remote patient monitoring and smart sensor technologies for senior living with the Caradigm Intelligence Platform to deliver new insights and solutions for tailored care plans.
“Incorporating home health monitoring into the workflow of care managers will drive improved patient engagement and better adherence to care plans,” says Brian Drozdowicz, Vice President of Population Health, Caradigm.
Care Innovations will use Caradigm’s advanced cloud-based intelligence platform and deep analytics capabilities to build innovative solutions based on data collected from the patient’s home.
“The rate at which we are collecting and delivering robust clinical and behavioral data from the home is accelerating rapidly,” says Sean Slovenski, CEO, Intel-GE Care Innovations. “We need to integrate these diverse data sets to help support consumer preferences, lifestyles, communities and care delivery models that lead to healthy consumer activation in their own care. We recognize that in order to reduce health costs and drive improvements in the healthcare delivery ecosystem, consumers must be engaged to play a more direct role. The robust data generated from remote care delivery systems can be harnessed to bring meaningful, personalized care support for clinicians, patients and informal caregivers.”
Solutions
Set the foundation for your ACO
Orion Health Collaborative Care for ACOs is a comprehensive care coordination solution aimed at supporting the efforts of provider and payer organizations in achieving their accountable care and Meaningful Use goals. This all-inclusive suite lays the IT foundation for an ACO and includes interoperability, longitudinal medical records, analytics and care coordination technologies. The technology is currently being implemented in several major healthcare organizations, including Saint Francis Care, Scottsdale Healthcare Partners and Mary Washington Healthcare. Orion Health
Connect patients remotely
Empower patients to self-test at home using Alere HomeLink. This cellular device provides a gateway to Alere’s Connected Health platform, with integrated products and services for health management. These tools efficiently connect patients to their providers and enhance care by putting actionable health information at physicians’ fingertips. This solution is FDA cleared for over-the-counter use with glucose meters, blood-pressure monitors, weight scales and pulse oximeters. It can connect to multiple compatible monitoring devices via Bluetooth or wired USB. Alere Connect
Award-winning telehealth
American Well has been recognized with the 2014 North American Frost & Sullivan Company of the Year Award for providing a turnkey telehealth service that connects physicians with more than 100 million individuals over the Web, mobile devices and retail kiosks across 44 states and the District of Columbia. This solution streamlines overall care delivery while providing a reliable system for administrative functions in payment processing, claims/eligibility management, advanced analytics and reporting. American Well
Keep home care workers safe
AtHoc’s Home Care Alerts interactive personnel security and safety applications for Android and iOS smartphones provide home care workers with emergency alerting capabilities. Caregivers who sense danger for themselves or their patients can instantly activate duress alerts with the touch of a button on their smartphone for rapid incident response. Supervisors can receive “check-in” visit verifications via reporting from health workers in the field, and the self-activated geo-tracking capability accurately captures worker locations. AtHoc
Reduce readmissions with telemonitoring
Developed in collaboration with clinicians and health systems, Philips’ hospital-to-home programs equip providers with a range of telehealth tools and services. Partners HealthCare At Home (PHAH) in Massachusetts has selected Philips to provide improved clinical oversight using home monitoring devices for newly discharged patients and those with chronic conditions, such as congestive heart failure. PHAH nursing staff can remotely monitor more than 200 patients to date by tracking vital signs and intervening earlier with medical attention. Philips
Feel the power of population management
McKesson Population Manager provides aggregated data from electronic health records (EHRs), practice management systems, pharmacies, labs and more to track individual patients and identify patients with gaps in care. Actionable details allow users to achieve better preventive care and disease management, improve physician compliance with quality measures and care guidelines, streamline workflow and patient outreach, generate PQRS reports and clinically integrate their provider network to enable contract negotiation. McKesson
Video with a simple touch
Genesis Touch 2.1, the latest version of Honeywell HomMed’s wireless remote patient monitor, features new one-touch video and larger data plan options. This device operates on 3G cellular or Wi-Fi to provide quick and simple face-to-face interaction between a patient and his or her healthcare provider. Patients simply touch the “Video” button on the tablet’s screen to be linked into a scheduled video conference call with up to 12 other parties. A 4G option is available. Honeywell HomMed
