Reflections and Key Themes from the World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress

Reflections and Key Themes from the World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress

NaviNet was pleased to participate in the World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress (WHIT) in DC, where we were fortunate to participate in a panel as well as attend several interesting sessions. The sixth annual conference brought together health plans, government officials, providers and other healthcare stakeholders to educate and address "strategic, organizational and IT decisions" in the ever-changing healthcare industry.

Several themes emerged throughout the four-day conference. Discussions focused on changes stemming from the implementation of the Affordable Care Act such as Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) and the progress providers and hospitals are making towards the Meaningful Use of EMRs. One consistent theme throughout these discussions was the need to develop interoperability and connectivity in healthcare. Despite the recent political changes in Washington D.C. resulting from the midterm elections, it's clear that HITECH and ACA will continue to transform healthcare over the next two years. For all stakeholders, this means it's time to prepare for significant changes. Providers are being incentivized to adopt EMR systems, transition paper patient records to electronic records and begin training their staffs on new technologies. Health plans must now prepare for the 2011 Medical Loss Ratio mandate, which states that 80-85% of consumer premiums must be spent on patient care delivery.

I was gratified to represent NaviNet on the educational panel entitled "A Unified Approach to Patient Information Management: Meaningful Adoption and Use of HIT." NaviNet's Chief Information Officer John Kelly moderated the session and I was joined on the panel by Jay Eisenstock, manager of Provider e-Solutions at Aetna, and Tim Roche, president and chief executive officer of MDdatacor. The discussion centered around a patient-centric approach to healthcare data management and how it can successfully address industry challenges such as skyrocketing healthcare costs, care coordination among providers, increasing patient demand for involvement in their own care decisions and a lack of HIT system interoperability. The panelists were unanimous in agreeing that the industry needs a technology approach that provides multiple stakeholders with an accurate and holistic view of a patient's healthcare information. They also agreed that the answer lies in not only who controls the information, but how that information is connected, managed, integrated, measured and reported.

The panelists continued to further define and explore solutions for unified patient information management (UPIM). UPIM is about managing patient information throughout the entire lifecycle of care, from pre- to post-office appointment. UPIM unifies administrative, financial and clinical information and integrates the applications and office workflows that use this information. For example, Jay Eisenstock discussed how Aetna uses NaviNet Insurer Connect's electronic eligibility and benefits inquiries as triggers to deliver clinical messages to physicians along with the administrative information. Tim Roche discussed MDdatacor's patented approach to aggregating and analyzing comprehensive patient clinical data to support healthcare quality improvement.

The presentation "KP HealthConnect Strategic and Tactical Considerations, Ongoing System-Wide Innovations and Results to Date," led by Louise Liang, MD, really struck a chord with us. The session evaluated Kaiser Permanente's EMR deployment, which at a $4 billion price tag is the world's largest private sector EMR deployment . The presentation addressed the challenges of adopting technology and finding solutions through proven change management theory. Dr. Liang focused on the importance of having an influential champion who truly believes in the program and its potential impact on improving patient care, a champion who can help equip others to disseminate the message. Kaiser Permanente experimented with some soft mandate techniques like publishing and promoting leader boards and honoring top users in newsletters to create a healthy sense of competition. She reminded us that a fundamental workflow redesign of this size takes significant time and investment to succeed but that results are fully worth the effort. As a result of their efforts, Kaiser Permanente has seen more than 50 percent of its 8.6 million members engage with their health online.

We left the conference invigorated about health IT and the underpinnings of an interconnected, patient-centric healthcare system.

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