Analytics

(SPONSORED) What if you could know in advance which patients would benefit from certain therapies? Or could intervene in a medical crisis before it's too late? While doctors have traditionally had to rely on instinct to make these calls, predictive analytics could be a game changer for hospitals, healthcare providers and patients.

Analytics functionality has improved measurably in recent years, according to Chilmark Research, but  workflow integration remains a key hurdle.

Digitizing clinical quality measures, also known as eCQM, isn’t just about meeting government requirements. It’s also about healthcare organizations smartly using electronic data to drive decisions, said Keith Woeltje, MD, director of healthcare informatics at the Center for Clinical Excellence at BJC HealthCare. “It’s not just about the government, but what we choose to do ourselves,” he added. Woeltje is responsible for informatics, analytics and reporting at BJC HealthCare, in addition to leading its clinical quality measurement group. He will deliver a presentation on eCQM at HIMSS16. See all of our HIMSS16 previews Woeltje said his team found electronic measures easy to use on patient adverse events and other subsequent events. However, while BJC HealthCare met the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services meaningful use requirements, there were “enormous discrepancies” with the health system’s EHR data. Woeltje will present on eCQM and BJC HealthCare’s successful implementation at HIMSS16 in Las Vegas. In his session, “Reconciling Abstracted to Electronic Quality Measures,” Woeltje will discuss BJC HealthCare’s integrated transition to electronic quality measures and his findings and recommendations, using abstracted measures. [Also: CMS makes annual update to 2016 eCQMs] It was the aforementioned discrepancies that led BJC HealthCare to partner with Encore, a healthcare IT consultancy, to analyze these gaps and manage workflows and EHR data. “We wanted to tease those out,” Woeltje said. “We met the requirements, but given that this will be the way we report clinical quality in the future, we needed to it reflect our actual quality of care,” Woeltje said. Going through the audit and discrepancy process was enormously helpful for successfully implementing eCQM. But there’s no tool that can fix these gaps, Woeltje said. While BJC HealthCare could have continued to use certified EHRs and forced the workflows to capture data to reduce gaps and improve the quality of care, the health system turned to the physicians to discover what was needed to “use electronic data to focus on internal issues for electronic surveillances,” Woeltje said. “No health system is thinking about adding more projects,” Woeltje said. “Hospitals want to focus on solutions to reduce errors and become as efficient as possible.” [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Woeltje and his team at BJC HealthCare planned the integrated approach when they noticed more quality programs were moving into eMeasures. The results from BJC HealthCare’s transition can prove helpful for those organizations considering similar changes. The session “Reconciling Abstracted to Electronic Quality Measures” is scheduled for Tuesday, March 1, 2016, at the Sands Expo Convention Center in Palazzo D. HIMSS16 runs from Feb. 29-Mar. 4. Twitter: @JessiefDavis This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

(SPONSORED) How to rise above all the marketing chatter is perhaps one of the most difficult marketing questions to tackle.

(SPONSORED) Health may be priceless, but healthcare is not. With medical costs on the rise, insurance companies and government payers are increasingly asking pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers to prove--and quantify--the value of their therapies.

As the Zika virus spreads from South America to the United States, epidemiologist and public health expert Christine Hockett says disease surveillance technology is key to protecting against it. Keeping open lines of electronic communication between hospitals and their state and local health agencies is critical as those departments "collect and analyze disease counts and monitor how disease spreads throughout a community or geographic location," said Hockett, who works for Xerox-owned Consilience. [Also: Experts warn of Zika epidemic as hospitals, health departments prepare] Zika, spread to people through mosquito bites, is currently most prevalent in South America. In response, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel alert for U.S. citizens traveling to regions where virus transmission is ongoing. But Hockett says she expects the virus to increasingly move into the United States. She points to a recent article in The Lancet, which argued that, "with an estimated 440,000 – 1.3 million cases currently in Brazil alone, Zika virus could be following in the footsteps of dengue and chikungunya, which are also transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. "Given that an outbreak anywhere is potentially a threat everywhere," the authors argued, "now is the time to step up all efforts to prevent, detect, and respond to Zika virus." "I don't think 'scared' is the right word," said Hockett. "But we need to be aware of what's happening. And definitely, I think there are certain areas of the U.S. that are more vulnerable than others." Robust electronic surveillance – data collection and reporting – is essential to keeping that spread as limited as possible. Syndromic surveillance has been a key part of meaningful use since the very beginning, of course, with the government requiring providers to prove their ability to use "timely pre-diagnostic data and statistical tools to detect and characterize unusual activity for further public health investigation." The Maven Outbreak Management Software offers Web-based case management tools that can help local and state health systems do disease surveillance, enabling them to analyze the health data from specific diseases. Rather than a siloed database, the Maven tool is accessible across jurisdictions to local and state public health departments, and can integrate electronic reporting. Outbreaks can be assessed and triaged as confirmed cases emerge or patients at risk present themselves, with updates shared electronically or via its secure Web portal, according to the company. It can also be updated as new disease threats emerge. That happened in 2014 during the Ebola crisis, and it did again earlier this month as Zika started to spread. "With the configurability of Maven, you're able to adapt to these new emerging diseases," she said. "The CDC on Jan. 15 said, 'You need to be able to do this in your disease surveillance systems.' A couple weeks later, all of our deployments have this Zika-enabled data module." Here’s how it would work from hospital's perspective. "Say I recently just traveled to Brazil," she said. "And I come back to the U.S. I go and see my primary care provider and say, 'Please test me for the Zika virus, just to make sure I don't have it.'" (Zika symptoms are very mild, and could be easy to miss.) "So I get tested, that then gets entered into the EHR system. That lab report, once the lab processes that, not only does the doctor report it to the state health department, but the lab does too. That reporting is done through the connections into Maven, which is hosted within the local and state health departments – a case is created, the epidemiologist can see that I am a potential case of Zika. They would call me and do the necessary follow up and data collection needed, specific to the virus. Once that case is confirmed, the system is able to report it to CDC." If technology is critical in the fight against Zika, however, people and process are even more so. [Also: Questions raised about EHR workflow in Ebola case] As seen in the 2014 Ebola outbreak – when a patient at Dallas-based Texas Health Resources first appeared with Ebola symptoms, but the fact that he had recently traveled from Africa, while logged in his EHR, was still missed by subsequent members of his care team – the balance between IT and clinical workflow can be a challenge. "It's definitely a collaborative effort," said Hockett. She pointed to the One Health concept, which holds that the health of humans is inextricably connected to the health of animals and the environment. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] That holistic approach means there's a deep need for collaboration, she said. "Use of effective surveillance systems is essential: knowing the symptoms of the diseases that are going on, talking with your provider community and epidemiologists and local and state health departments. The communications between hospitals and local and state health departments are critical." Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN

ACO quality measures were enhanced by pay-for-performance programs, according to the JAMA network, but providers also need advanced technologies, interventions, and close contact with patients. 

New rules are anticipated to allow organizations -- those approved as qualified entities -- to confidentially share or sell analyses of the data.

New offering on Welltok platform aimed at some of largest employers, including IBM.

Healthcare IT News and HIMSS are accepting topic and speaker proposals for the Pop Health Forum 2016, May 19-20, in Boston. While population health management is key to bending healthcare’s cost curve and improving the quality of care, achieving those goals is easier said than done. With that in mind, the Pop Health Forum’s goal is to give attendees, 250-plus healthcare providers and payers, solid information on how to improve their population health initiatives. Click here to submit a proposal and for more information. Attendees prefer case studies and are eager to learn how their peers are addressing common challenges and pain points. As such, we place a high value on proposals from payer and provider organizations that offer practical, actionable information and real-life solutions. Proposals should focus on one or more of the forum’s three key areas, the cornerstones of population health: data analytics, care coordination and patient engagement. The deadline to submit a proposal is 5 p.m., Feb. 12.