Population Health

The Medical Group Management Association, which represents medical practice leaders across the country, has signed up for space in the Catalyst Health-Tech Innovation development, a new healthcare technology hub in Denver. It will join other health-focused organizations, practice groups, health finance companies and high-tech organizations as a tenant. [Also: Extend meaningful use reporting, says MGMA] MGMA, which represents more than 33,000 medical practice administrators and executives in practices of all sizes, types, structures and specialties, is headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, with a government affairs office in Washington, D.C. The 5,000-square-foot addition to MGMA's existing campus in Englewood will be part of the Catalyst Health-Tech Innovation development, which encompasses a full city block in the River North neighborhood of Denver. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] The additional space will provide an environment for MGMA staff and leaders to collaborate with other industry leaders on developing efficient and cost-effective strategies for medical practices and improving care for patients, said MGMA President and CEO Halee Fischer-Wright, MD, in a statement. The hub is slated to open in 2018. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN

(SPONSORED) Pop health management care delivery approaches exhibit a significant overlap with existing care management programs, but offer additional tactics to improve both clinical and financial outcomes for provider organizations.

The model will use risk stratification to help identify Medicare patients most at risk of a first heart attack or stroke in the next year.

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.

While the development of accurate predictive analytics has the potential to head off debilitating and costly conditions among patients, one veteran of the burgeoning field says it’s important not to rush in without the proper planning. "The first thing to understand is you need to have the right technical infrastructure components in place and it has to address what you are looking to do with it," said David M. Seo, MD, associate vice president of IT for clinical applications and chief medical informatics officer for the University of Miami Health System. "But there is a lot people don't think about – like data curation and quality," he said. "Is the data you have good enough to even do predictive analytics? Because if it isn't, that prediction may actually harm you more than it helps. You may go off on a wrong tangent." Seo and Chitra Raghu, senior program manager and innovations officer for Lockheed Martin Health and Life Sciences, presented will be presenting the U of M system's experience in preparing its predictive analytics platform in "Predictive Analytics Drives Population Health Management" at HIMSS16 on Tuesday. Beyond the quality of the data itself, Seo said other factors, including the presence or absence of skilled data scientists; a thorough understanding of how to localize predictive models from other health systems; and how to best integrate existing investments in electronic health records with analytics technology, must be carefully considered before pulling the trigger on new platforms. "There are so many technologies," said Raghu. "You have to find what is the right one that will help hospitals achieve what they are trying to achieve, at the lowest cost." Seo added even health networks with a dozen or more hospitals are not likely to already have the necessary skill sets in-house. And even a platform that offers great analytics capabilities, for instance, may not be popular with either clinicians or financial executives if the caregivers need to toggle back and forth between an EHR and an analytics platform. "If I'm looking at a patient in front of me right now, I don't have time to go somewhere else, and when I've gone somewhere else I've already lost the advantage of this massive investment in my EHR,” Seo said. “So it has to be part of your system's ecosystem." The session "Predictive Analytics Drives Population Health Management" is slated for March 1 from 2:30-3:30 p.m. in, Palazzo I at the Sands Expo Convention Center.

Steward Health Care Network, the second largest physician network in Massachusetts, will offer Quartet Health's platform as a service to its providers and their patients. The multi-year agreement expands the partnership between Steward and Quartet Health that started in 2015. Boston-based Steward Health Care, a Next Generation ACO,  is the largest integrated community care organization and hospital network in New England, with more than 17,000 employees in more than 150 communities. [Also: Steward Healthcare: ACO success hinges on IT strength] Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy joined the board of the New York-based startup last October. Kennedy has been open about his addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs, and he recently wrote about his struggles – and those of his family – in his book, A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction. While serving in Congress, Kennedy authored the Mental Health Parity Act, which required health insurance companies to provide coverage benefits for treatment of mental health conditions that are comparable to coverage provided for physical conditions. Quartet estimates that 7 to 9 percent of Massachusetts residents are treated for both a chronic medical condition and behavioral health condition in a given year. [Also: Legislation seeks to extend meaningful use incentives to behavioral health] Also, an additional 20 percent of this population is either not diagnosed or not treated for behavioral health conditions. As Quartet executives put it, care is often disjointed. Quartet's technology platform identifies individuals in need of behavioral health resources and enables primary care providers to set those individuals on effective treatment paths in tight collaboration with behavioral health professionals. To date, more than 70 percent of Steward providers who used the Quartet platform for the first time became repeat users. Under the expanded agreement with Quartet, all Steward primary care providers will be able to use the Quartet platform and all Steward patients will be able to access free tools and services including online self-care resources, peer support interventions and telepsychiatry. "Access to behavioral health resources is one of the most pressing challenges in primary care today," Steve Stein, MD, said in a statement. Stein is part of Family Medical Associates, a practice within the Steward Health Care Network. Besides Kennedy, Quartet is backed by Annie Lamont from Oak and Carl Byers from Fidelity Bio. Twitter: @HealthITNews

InterSystems has partnered with Canadian company Pulse Infoframe to make clinical research and population health studies easier.

The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and Dell CEO are both coming off of banner years.

Population health management touches many areas of healthcare technology and patient care. At HIMSS16, the Population Health Knowledge Center will bring together a diverse set of professionals who are able to share solutions at various stages.

Patient engagement isn't always about patient portals. "In fact, most of the time it's not," said Pamela DeSalvo Landis, vice president of information services at Carolinas HealthCare System, the second largest public, nonprofit healthcare system in the United States.