Financial/Revenue Cycle Management

Group joins with insurance broker Willis Towers Watson on new program.

With more than 70 sessions on tap at HIMSS16 concentrating on value-based care, it promises to be among the hottest topics in this year’s show. HIMSS Quality, Cost, and Safety Committee leaders Shelley DiGiacomo, RN, vice president of consulting services at the Quammen Group and Pauline Byom, regional quality administrator at the Mayo Clinic, in fact, will share recommendations for quality reporting and performance requirements within the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System. [Also: 11 essential quotes from notable HIMSS keynotes] Last November, HIMSS warned the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the administrative burdens on providers, and now the tension continues. On Jan. 14, 31 major healthcare organizations, including Intermountain Healthcare and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center wrote to CMS calling for the federal government to back down off of Meaningful Use 3. It’s not meeting the ultimate objective, the organizations said. At HIMSS16, DiGiacomo and Byom will explain the HIMSS committee’s core mission to promote the use of health IT to improve the quality of healthcare delivery while ensuring that data collection is not an overly burdensome part of workflow. See all of our HIMSS16 previews The speakers will also share insights about the policies that are driving value-based care and tips for recognizing current barriers to e-reporting in quality programs and advice on developing principles for feedback on CMS programs. What’s more, DiGiacomo and Byom intend to help attendees know how best to identify opportunities to participate in the development of CMS policy outside of regulatory public comments. Come to the keynote, “Making Payment for Value Work: HIMSS Recommendations,” and find out HIMSS’ predictions on Monday, Feb. 29 from 3:15 - 4:15 p.m. at the Sands Expo Convention Center, Lando, Room 4301. Twitter: @HealthITNews 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.

Elli Riley, Director for Events and Meeting Services at HIMSS, offers a brief overview of what attendees at HIMSS16 can expect from educational sessions to the expansive exhibit floor. Watch more video coverage of HIMSS16

Revenue cycle management company ZirMed will launch its new Remit and Deposit Management system at HIMSS16, the company said. The company said the new system is designed to help provider organizations greatly reduce the manual work typically involved with reconciling payments. Provider organizations waste a tremendous amount of time manually matching payments with remittance advice, the information that associates payment amounts with corresponding services, said Ric Sinclair, vice president of product at ZirMed. See all of our HIMSS16 previews “Providers have to go through a very manual, intense and burdensome process to reconcile payment information with the actual dollars on hand,” he added. ZirMed’s Remit and Deposit Management system takes all the information from a provider organization’s bank accounts and in real time uses proprietary algorithms to compare and match data, company officials said. “This matching process can become a mega-problem when you think about all of the complexities in healthcare today,” Sinclair said. “As organizations make acquisitions and deal with new payment models, the number of bank accounts and the number of ways to get paid increases. This results in a gigantic payment posting cash reconciliation process, with a lot of money coming in and the need to figure out how to apply and distribute it.” [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] At one healthcare organization pilot testing the new system, ZirMed said it was able to automatically match 97 percent of payments and remits, a process that would take an individual 3 to 4 minutes per match, with thousands of matches required every day. That left the organization to only have to match the 3 percent of exceptions. However, Remit and Deposit Management offers tools that assist individuals with matching the remainders, tools that cut the time this process took by 50 percent. ZirMed declined to reveal this client organization, but Sinclair said it will do so at HIMSS16. “At our pilot clients, their overall time to reconcile is going from hours and hours of multiple staff members a business day to one full-time employee in less than an hour a day,” Sinclair said. “This becomes killer when you think about all the healthcare organizations looking at bundled payment models and new contracts with insurance plans that include things like being reimbursed a single payment for an entire episode of care.” Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT

Electronic health records are typically touted as providing two primary and vital services: readily accessible patient records and protection against contraindicated medications. But Intermountain Healthcare is benefiting from a growing and transformative versatility in the application of its EHRs.

The Baylor College of Medicine revenue cycle department has come back from dire situation that saw the division hemorrhaging staff over what CTO Alex Izaguirre called a lack of vision for department.

MidMichigan Health, a nonprofit health system affiliated with the University of Michigan Health System, is ready to replace a mixed bag of technology with an electronic health record from Epic Systems, which will provide the clinical, administrative and billing software. The goal: to connect its hospitals, physician practices and outpatient care facilities on one platform for medical records, registration, scheduling and billing. Contract cost: $55 million. MidMichigan Health executives say they expect to recoup that investment within six years through efficiencies gained. They've named the endeavor the One Person, One Record project. [See also: 11 Epic stories worth reading again.] The health system's leaders announced the decision in a January 26 post on the MidMichigan Health website. The EHR rollout is one of several initiatives the health system is undertaking to put patients and their families at the center of care while enhancing safety and quality, patient experience, employee and provider engagement and financial stability, officials noted. Project team members have already begun traveling to Wisconsin for Epic training and will begin configuring the system in early 2016. MidMichigan anticipates the system will be fully operational at its hospitals and doctors' offices in April 2017. A second phase of the project in late 2017 will connect MidMichigan Home Care and other newly owned subsidiaries to the rest of the health system. "Our current state of multiple vendor systems requires us to maintain a large number of custom interfaces," said Dan Waltz, CIO. "This has simply become unsustainable, both in terms of the cost to maintain those systems and the potential risk and confusion that it introduces." [See also: Epic scores EHR contract from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, beats Cerner.] There is more to the project than setting up new technology. "As part of the process, we will be evaluating all of our workflows, comparing them to industry best practices and making improvements," said Pankaj Jandwani, MD, MidMichigan Health's CMIO, in the news release. "It's an opportunity for us to think differently about how we work and to design our tools and our processes around what patients and their families need. Jandwani added the changes would also help improve productivity and satisfaction, with tasks and roles "dramatically transformed." As a result of the project, patients will be able to schedule appointments online and self-check-in from home or at on-site kiosks. The health system will also offer virtual care options such as telemedicine and e-visits, and the ability to view and pay MidMichigan Health bills from one account.

Venture capital funding for health information technology totaled $4.6 billion in 574 deals in 2015, according to Mercom Capital Group, a global communications and consulting firm that keeps tabs on VC investments.

MedStar Health, the largest not-for-profit healthcare organization in the Maryland and Washington, D.C., region, is collaborating with Uber to increase access to health appointments.

A portfolio management office just might be essential for healthcare providers trying to navigate away from fee-for-service and toward value-based care.