Accountable Care

AMGA and MGMA still see too many rules for providers participating in value-based care, and say the program hasn't delivered the relief from administrative burden that was promised.

Healthy Alliance IPA, led by former ONC deputy Dr. Jacob Reider, will work with MVP Health Care to connect social services and healthcare providers via the Unite Us technology platform. The aim: strengthening community organizations, boosting pop health and reducing costs.

Among Holston Medical Group’s many accomplishments with the help of the HIE: Increased pay-for-value payments by 44%, with more than $13 million in value-based revenue annually; increased fee-for-service payments by 7%; and reduced employee-to-provider ratio by 0.7 FTEs.

Four experts in population health management offer wide-ranging technology guidance and best practices for healthcare provider organizations launching pop health initiatives.

The CFO of the analytics company, which has been mulling a stock offering for years, says capital raised from shareholders will help it gain the size and scope it needs to achieve its mission.

The tool is meant to help healthcare organizations better understand how their social needs investments and community partnerships might pay off, in savings and reduced utilization for high need, high cost patients.

Castell will offer technologies and services to guide care decisions, manage patient experience, implement virtual care, address social determinants and more, building from the health system's own best practices.

Population health management vendor SPH Analytics is merging with SA Ignite, which develops tools to help providers optimize their performance scores for the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System. Financial terms of the merger were not disclosed. WHY IT MATTERS Together, the two companies will be able to offer more expansive technology for pop health and quality measurement, officials said, giving clients new tools to help them manage the transition to value-based reimbursement. The post-merger company will focus on helping provider customers meet quality measure requirements, educating them on the details of MIPS and other advanced value-based payment frameworks and offering consultative support to help clients to maximize the financial ROI of  new reimbursement models. The newly combined business serves more than 21,000 providers, including hospitals, physician practices and provider networks. THE LARGER TREND Healthcare providers have no shortage of quality measures, across a variety of federal programs, with which they're expected to comply for value-based reimbursement. This past week, for the first time, HHS announced that it will hold a Quality Summit to take a fresh look at the tangle of regulations and streamline them where necessary. Beyond these prescribed quality measures, however, more and more health systems are taking a more expansive view of population health, applying advanced analytics to stratify risk and, sometimes, using technology to help them intervene and improve the social determinants of health for those patients most at need. ON THE RECORD "This strategic alignment creates a meaningfully expanded client base and enables us to build on our impressive track record of helping clients achieve substantive and sustained results in their shift to value-based care," said Amy Amick, president and CEO of SPH Analytics, in a statement. "The SA Ignite solution set blends with our Population Care and Population Value solution lines in a highly complementary manner that will help us better serve our combined client base." “Working alongside electronic health records, our cloud-based IgniteMIPS software delivers powerful analytics that surface truly actionable improvement opportunities," added Tom S. Lee, CEO and founder of SA Ignite. "Now merged with SPH, we are able to offer our customers a broader suite of quality measures such as MIPS CQMs, HEDIS, and ACO measures, as well as cost and utilization analytics and patient level drill-down capabilities." Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.

With the cost data technology integrated with its Epic EHR, Houston Methodist Sugar Land has reported approximately $717,000 in attributable cost savings with an average incremental cost reduction of $105 per admission.

Digitize.AI's Lia technology uses real-time analytics and machine learning to automatically check for new cases and securely submit them directly to payers.