Description: The article is about the efforts done by the doctors on retiree health exchange.The program put patients’ data in a format in a way that they can understand,use it for themselves and share it with people that they trust and to those who are involved in their care.
We’re here talk about how to make health data useful to the individuals. We have Mike O’Neill,chief executive officer of medical soft and also Randy farmer, chief operating officer of the Delaware health information network or DHIN or as most people call it DIN. We’re excited to have you all here.
Randy,let’s start off with you. Tell us a little bit about DIN and why you chose to offer a personal health record with medical soft. It’s vary exciting. We’ve been thrilled to work with folks at medical soft. We were the first statewide health information exchange to launch in the nation. The statewide health information exchange to launch back in 2007. We’ve got a lot of data. Part of our mission is to make it useful not only for clinicians but also for patients.
Making data available to patients is to engage them more with their healthcare. It is a key part to bring down the cost of healthcare. It made a lot of sense that we get into the business of not only providing secure accessible ways for clinicians to access the data but also for the patients that they treat. Tell us what are the opportunities that come out of giving patients access to this clinical data.
It puts patients in control of their health and wellness. It does that in a way that makes sense for them if some people are healthy and want to stay that way. You may have people who have a chronic condition. What they want to do with the data may be different. But it all starts with being able to access all of their information whether it’s from their doctors or from a lab or their own data from their own devices. Then put it in a format in a way that they can understand,use it for themselves and share it with people that they trust and to those who are involved in their care.
That’s so important. This provides a platform for folks to securely share their information with people that advocate for their care. It’s sorely needed for sure. One of the challenges for every hie out there is how can they be sustainable. Is this access that’s going to make you know an hie a sustainable solution? That is another point of pride of ours. We’ve been self sustainable since 2012.
We provided products and services and get paid for those products and services and deliver value to the hospitals,labs,radiology firms ,insurance companies and to the state. Everything we do has to do with perpetuating and solidifying. Death status is being self sustainable.This is another mean by which that one can make something more relevant if you’re only going to increase the ability for you or to be able to derive value out of that or to be able to go ahead and and add to the ways that you can continue to be financially sustainable.
We’re a nonprofit organization. One of the neat things about how we do things is that we look at how this is going to impact a certain segment of the healthcare ecosystem. We’re not looking to satisfy shareholders or stock analysts on a quarterly basis fortune. We don’t have that burden.
It’s about doing the right thing for patients. It’s about doing the right thing for the clinicians. At the same time delivering something that they sorely need. We think that this can help in the fraud waste and abuse segment. We think this can help also with clinical research. Those areas are going to depending upon the the materiality or the value we deliver. We’re going to be able to be compensated with providing these products and services. That’s great.
Do your provider members access this data? Because there’s been a lot of discussion that a lot of patients don’t care. I mean you don’t care until you care or until you have something happen and we all have something happen. We all have loved ones in our lives that are dealing with clinical conditions. I’ve got a 84 year old mother and I want to stay close and help her and be her care advocate for her like a lot of my colleagues at a similar stage of life as I am.
This is a another channel to help making that information available. We launched back in 2007. We’ve got over 28 different data centers. We’ve get alerts from hospitals and five other states and the District of Columbia on Delaware,patients that traverse those ecosystems. With all that information coming in,with millions of records,we got to make this valuable or useful or inaccessible in a secure way to patients and to care providers. The PHR provides a great tool to make that happen.
One of the things that I think DIN is in a unique position to help address is as the way care is delivered and paid for evolves,both providers and patients realize they need more data than they each have individually. So a hospital needs the data on the patient care no matter where it was delivered. As they get an aggregated clinical data they can get a sense of outcomes and care quality.
One of the things that I think dinesen is well-positioned for is to look at what’s the impact of adding claims information to clinical data. You have data that tells you what are the quality, what are the outcomes,what are the costs,what are the efficiencies. The ability to close the loop from provider to patient and back. That’s dinners in a unique position to do that. The claims is a great point. When you take the financial information? It’s included in a claim from an insurance company. You marry it with the clinical information and you can start to see what providers what procedures are maybe the most costly or baby doesn’t have the best outcomes.
You can start to take action and and also help organizations understand where they can be more efficient. It’s going to be a huge aspect of helping to bring down the cost of healthcare which is a laser beam focused. Data tells the story. And then with the story you can take actions. This is part of the exciting things that we’re looking to offer with this program.
That’s great. You talked about patients accessing the data and having it available to them and to their providers,we talked about the notifications which I think is a powerful thing that a lot of HIES and other health information exchanges have done. What else is on the roadmap? Claims data,it sounds like it’s on the roadmap. There are a couple things.
One of the cool things that we did with our particular product was to integrate a real-time alert system to the people’s smartphones. You can get a text when a lab result has been delivered. If you’re set up as a proxy for a loved one, let’s say like in my case my mom goes to the emergency room. I can get an alert on my cell phone because of this platform.It will tell me that mom is in the emergency room all with her consent. That is an important test which has been delivered either for me or for a loved one. By doing that it can get me closer to my mom.
The cool thing about this is if I get that alert and I’m not in the emergency room, somebody else is using my data using my insurance information. I can tap on my cell phone and then send an alert to the insurance company and to the hospital saying something’s not right. That goes to fraud and abuse and even patient identification is that wrong patient. It wasn’t necessarily fraud. That can be a patient safety issue.
To do some of those things,you need to start to get into a wide open field. What do you do when you have all the data together? The basics that we’re doing now to people to providers and to patients is to make sure that they can process and understand and share. Next is how do we help them extracting information from that data. If you’re a provider,can you look at population health type of data across the entire cohort? If you’re a patient,can you get information on care quality and cost effectiveness?
There are things like pre authorizations. It can help delaying the the application of treatment or the approval of treatment. If we could take this information and combine it together and understand who are the best in classes in terms of the providers,why should those people have to go for a pre-authorization all every time for a particular procedure? You can see where those folks are. They are on high cost, poor outcomes. They need help.
How the insurance company work with those providers? We can streamline that process with the best in-class and help those folks who need help or get out of that procedure.There will be more efficiencies and more cost savings. At the end of the day,it’s about better care and which is the ultimate outcomes. That’s great. The pre authorizations are the the misery of every doctor. Let’s finish off with any final thoughts on access to this health data means for patients and providers.
It seems like you are doing it and that a lot of people can’t say which is impressive. It is in a nutshell and part convenience. But also it’s life-saving and transformative. We had a story told by one of our hospitals on how a patient a young child had gone for a blood test. But it was not in one of their facilities. They were able to access the their information on this child when they were going through a routine checkup.
We’re able to see that the child had tested positive for leukemia. Instead of that not happen sooner or instead of that child not receive the care,they would have otherwise missed out on if that report had not been accessed. They’re getting treatment. In their prospects,a healthier outcome is better than it would have been otherwise.It ranges the spectrum of making things more convenient to to being life-saving. It’s a great space.
We think these are all things that you can do when you have not have the data but you address the interoperability,the big discussion and buzzword at hims and meetings. You start to make it practical and start to take that data convert it into something that both providers and patients can understand. You have unlocked a lot of capabilities for both of those populations.
I see it as a platform for all future innovations. That’s great. We’re here with Mike O’Neill chief executive officer of medical soft and Randy farmer chief operating officer of DIN the Delaware health information network. Check out more great health IT content at healthcareScene.com