Becker's Hospital Review

20 Executive Briefing Leveraging Technology to Power Transformation in Today's Healthcare Environment Healthcare executives, staff and clinicians consis- tently say they are both surprised and impressed at how new technology has disrupted the industry. As policymakers, payers and consumers impose higher standards on healthcare systems, including value based reimbursement strategies, hospitals and health systems are under pressure to change work- flows, clinical decision-making, and, importantly, how care managers maintain communication with patients throughout the continuum of care including transi- tions after hospitalization. One key to making these shifts is the incorporation of various technological tools and systems into day-to-day operations. For instance, technology is an efficient enabler of communication and coordination between members of the healthcare team. The vast majority of healthcare professionals — 95 percent — believe successful care coordination leads to reduced readmissions, accord- ing to the results of a survey by PerfectServe and Harris Poll. Additionally, 90 percent of survey respon- dents said investment in sophisticated data analytics is necessary for effective communication. While virtually all healthcare workers understand the need to employ interdisciplinary team communi- cation and clinical decision-making support tools with- in population health management efforts, problems with the software traditionally used for this purpose persist. Finding solutions for workflow management and decision support Care management software used by many payers is not well-suited for provider-led care management. It often is expensive, complex and lacks clinical pro- tocols, according to xG Health Solutions, a national healthcare solutions company launched in 2013 by Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health System. Addi- tionally, tools designed by payers often lack evidence based, condition-specific assessments, automated care plans guided by the patient's status and work- flows that support care manager activities. "Care management systems need to help care managers prioritize their work on any given day and provide impactful scripting to drive clinical improve- ments," says Melodi Brown, RN, MSN, CCM, vice president of care management at xG Health Solutions. "Care managers often don't know the relevant evi- dence to ask the questions to support patient needs. You can engage a patient and not ask the most critical questions or address key topics based upon risk stratification. xGCare™ helps prompt care managers with impactful content while they are engaging with a patient." xGCare, a care management program from xG Health, is driven by the experiences of the company's expert clinicians. xGCare contains built-in workflows for assessments and care plans, as well as patient health education and self-management plans and automated task prioritization. Data analytics is another valuable tactic hospitals and health systems use to inform clinical decisions and determine which patients require a higher degree of follow-up care after they are discharged from the hospital. According to a HealthLeaders Media survey from April 2015, just under half of healthcare organizations currently use analytics to track population health, but that number will reach nearly 80 percent by 2018. Nearly three-quarters of the survey's 8,000 respon- dents reported plans to begin or increase investments in the quality of their data in the next year, and 52 percent pointed to overcoming insufficient skills in data analytics as a top strategic priority, according to the survey report. Population segmentation, an analytic and clinical process "We use a two-step process to identify and then segment the population on whom we focus," says Ms. Brown. Sponsored by: C = 85 M = 50 Y = 0 K = 0 C = 56 M = 19 Y = 62 K = 0 C = 0 M = 0 Y = 0 K = 60

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