Becker's ASC Review

41 Executive Briefing Sponsored by: I nefficient, paper-based business processes have become incompatible with today's demanding healthcare environment where practices face massive complexities, ranging from reimbursement challenges to compliance hurdles — and this was before the COVID-19 pandemic. For the average physician, paperwork and administrative tasks take up about 15.6 hours per week, according to nearly 17,500 physicians Medscape surveyed from Oct. 4, 2019, to Feb. 10, 2020. It has long been clear that devoting so much time to paper-based processes isn't sustainable — excess administrative burden is among the leading causes of closure for independent practices, according to a 2017 report by the American Academy of Family Physicians. A year into the pandemic, as practices reel from elective case delays and higher COVID-19-related inventory expenses, the imperative to eliminate costly administrative inefficiencies is stronger than ever. "You have regulatory changes, price transparency rules, stretched labor, the challenge of remote access," said Steve Ingel, Executive Vice President of the Healthcare Solutions group for DJO® Global. "Cash is even more king today than it was yesterday when you add all those things up, especially following a year when the patient population was visiting their physician less frequently." That's where DJO's Healthcare Solutions platform, MotionMD®, comes into play. Installed in over 2,500 facilities, across 28k providers, the software is designed to streamline various functions throughout the continuum of care, from patient selection to claims processing, thereby helping providers save valuable time and energy. "We're trying to solve real problems through automation," Mr. Ingel said. "Automation takes a lot of burden off of already- strained resources." Solutions for every business scenario With a flexible development cycle, DJO continuously updates and expands MotionMD's software platform to meet practices' ever-evolving needs. For instance, in response to COVID-19-related restrictions on elective cases in March, DJO pivoted efforts and created a telehealth program to help customers deliver products to patients remotely. "We developed on the platform a compliant way for providers to prescribe products and have patients sign off on a telehealth visit," Mr. Ingel said. "We're able to deliver products right to the patient's home, so we don't have any breakage in that continuum of care." While responding to unexpected disruptions in healthcare, DJO® is also keeping an eye on major trends such as the migration of total joint replacements to outpatient settings. The share of knee replacements performed in ASCs is expected to hit nearly 30 percent by the mid-2020s, according to a September 2019 Bain & Co. report. DJO wants to help providers shift these procedures safely and with more certainty. OaraScore®, a predictive arthroplasty risk assessment tool on the MotionMD® platform, evaluates medical history to indicate whether a patient is well-suited for rapid discharge. A predictive guide based on nine comorbidity cohorts, the module addresses one of the most critical components of any successful outpatient total joint program — patient selection — and it can be customized to a practice's existing protocols. "All this has been peer-reviewed and validated," Mr. Ingel said. "It's going to enable even more practices to confidently migrate a good portion of these patients to an ASC setting." Mr. Ingel's confidence in OaraScore is backed by studies showing its effectiveness. In 2017, the Journal of Arthroplasty published a retrospective study of 1,120 primary total joint arthroplasty patients, which concluded "the OaraScore for primary TJA has more precise predictive ability" than either the ASA Physical Status or the Charlson Comorbidity Index. In 2018, a study of 332 patients who underwent primary total hip arthroplasty at an academic medical center came to a similarly promising conclusion: that OaraScore screening "was a highly predictive tool" in helping to identify next-day discharge patients. Recognizing that this kind of technology can help steer healthier patients away from hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, DJO in May 2020 announced that a six-month free trial of OaraScore would be available to all new users — yet another way the company has prioritized customers' and patients' needs during the crisis. "For the foreseeable future, it may be more realistic and appropriate for relatively healthy patients to avoid inpatient hospital stays," said Michael Meneghini, MD, a knee surgeon at Indianapolis-based IU Health and a paid DJO consultant. "It's reassuring for surgeons to have a tool like OaraScore that can help safely transition many total joint arthroplasty patients into a more appropriate outpatient or same-day discharge pathway." No Healthcare organization can afford to waste money, time or personnel on outdated systems

• Cover