Becker's Hospital Review

43 Executive Briefing Sponsored by: 4 strategies to connect insights and care teams to scale value-based care I n the United States, health systems are trying to achieve size and scale for long-term sustainability through collaborations and mergers and acquisitions. While these efforts may improve efficiency, they don't always generate the breakthrough innovation that value-based care models demand. To transition to value-based care, the health network of the future must deliver better health outcomes by operating smarter, faster and in a more coordinated manner. Becker's Hospital Review recently spoke with three healthcare lead- ers about how their organizations are mapping the journey to val- ue-based care. Nishant Anand, MD, executive vice president and CMO at Clearwater, Fla.-based BayCare Health System; John Krav- itz, CIO at Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health System; and Bharat Sutariya, MD, vice president and CMO, population health at Cerner, offered their thoughts on connecting insights and care teams in ag- ile ways. Key strategies, include: • Creation of a connected health network • Increased focused on holistic care • Innovation and experimentation using artificial intelligence and machine learning • Promotion of incremental and disruptive change Why scaling value-based care is difficult Shifting to value-based care models is critical for health systems. Yet many organizations continue to do the same approaches and expect different results. To transform care delivery and achieve better outcomes, services must be redesigned and redefined. Data, analytics, insights and workflow integration all play a central role. "The opportunities for improvement aren't always clearly identifiable. That's where data and analytics come into play, " Dr. Anand said. "When we look at where data leads us, rather than focusing where we intuitively think the opportunities are, we tend to be more successful." In response to the Meaningful Use and the ACA, most health systems achieved near universal EHR adoption. While EHRs are an important asset in optimizing care delivery, they alone don't inherently support value-based care beyond care transactions. To support proactive and accountable care management, organizations also need systems that aggregate, standardize and reconcile data to a comprehensive and longitudinal profile for each patient. Strategy 1: Creation of a connected health network According to Mr. Kravitz, system integration is imperative to promote availability of accurate and complete data to all providers and other care team members. Garnering deep relationships with vendors that are less specialized and more versatile is also helpful to streamline costs, improve agility and support digital strategies. Mr. Kravitz said, "We saw the value of having a scalable system that could aggregate data from multiple sources both inside and outside our organization. As a result, Geisinger decided to implement the Cerner HealtheIntent® platform." HealtheIntent is an EHR-agnostic, cloud-based data and insights platform. The technology enables organizations to aggregate, transform and reconcile data in a fashion that supports a wide and growing span of value-based care initiatives. Geisinger Health System is building a technology stack — which includes HealtheIntent — that will help facilitate real-time or near real-time integration of actionable data into the EHR at the point of service. The application integration layer of this technology stack is a critical element. "The application programming interface (API) integration layer will simplify our technology stack by supporting electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions, HL7 compliant transactions from the clinical enterprise and real-time integration," Mr. Kravitz said. "The integration layer to support real-time communication with advanced program integration is very important. I think it will be the Holy Grail for us to bring data back and forth quickly." Strategy 2: Increased focus on holistic care A foundation of enterprise-wide data is essential for enabling holistic care and enhancing the digital experience. Diverse data sources can be turned into meaningful information where a network of providers and other care team members can act. "We have a lot of data on our patients, but we need to aggregate it and turn it into useful information and analytics. Our collaboration with Cerner has been instrumental in accomplishing this goal," Dr. Anand said. Longitudinal records — organized, comprehensive health profiles collected over time — enhance patient context and rely on rich data from inside and outside the organization. Longitudinal records include information on clinical data, financial claims data, pharmacy benefit manager information, social determinants of health and more. "We must understand the health and care ecosystem that surrounds a person so that we can fully leverage resources to address patient risks and needs for better health," Dr. Sutariya said. "Cerner has built layers of surveillance and intelligence that proactively attribute patients to providers, identify risks, measure

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