Disruptive Technologies Make Their Mark for Healthcare Providers

Despite uncertainty about national healthcare policy, investors continue to fuel the red-hot health technology sector, which leverages innovation in the quest to improve outcomes, streamline care and cut costs.

Digital health startup firms banked $23 billion in venture funding over the past seven years, according to analysis from Rock Health. In 2017 alone, digital health investments hit an all-time high approaching $6 billion, with a record number of “mega-deals” (each exceeding $100 million) coming to fruition. Repeat investments also reached a peak last year, indicating confidence in future growth.

Rock Health’s research reveals the top value propositions funded during 2017:

  • Consumer health information (investments of $1.6 billion) — Empowering individuals to better understand their own health and the overall healthcare system.
  • Clinical decision support and precision medicine ($811 million) — Delivering timely information to providers to help inform care decisions and/or tailor the prevention, management or treatment of disease.
  • Fitness and wellness ($752 million) — General health maintenance and promotion, where illness prevention does not associate with a diagnostic billing code.
  • Disease monitoring ($517 million) — Using biometric devices to track specific clinical conditions.
  • Disease diagnosis ($493 million) — Identifying specific clinical indications.
  • Non-clinical workflow ($482 million) — Managing administrative operations such as scheduling and billing in a provider setting.

In short, digital health has aggressively moved past the fledgling stage. From here, innovators will need to demonstrate much more than a unique idea. They’ll be asked to show verifiable advancement in building, sustaining and scaling a profitable business model.

Imminent Innovations

Venture capitalists aside, doctors and researchers agree that technology-backed breakthroughs will figure prominently among major medical developments expected in 2018.

Cleveland Clinic, which annually publishes a top-ten list of innovations vetted by an internal panel of physicians and scientists, predicts disruption in areas such as diabetes management, telehealth and centralized monitoring of hospital patients.

For example, a closed-loop insulin delivery system, essentially an artificial pancreas, will improve outcomes for Type 1 diabetes patients and increasingly be reimbursable by insurers this year, according to the report. The system will continuously link a monitoring device to an insulin pump to stabilize blood glucose at an unprecedented level, rather than requiring the patient to determine how much insulin to inject.

Also on the immediate horizon, distance health technologies will be widely adopted, with 90 percent of healthcare executives reporting active or emerging telehealth programs. Telehealth is now integrated with more than 19 million patients using attachable devices to record and report medical information. The technology will remove geographic barriers to care, enabling timely treatment to vulnerable populations at significantly reduced cost.

We’ll also see provider organizations implementing “mission control”-type operations, through which off-site personnel use sensors and high-definition cameras to monitor patients’ blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, oxygen level and other essential readings. This type of system can double the number of monitored patients per technician while initiating advance warnings of trouble in areas such as cardiology wards.

The Agility Factor

Disruptive healthcare technologies typically incorporate some aspect of data integration geared toward actionable intervention or prevention that justifies initial and ongoing investment. The takeaway for healthcare decision-makers is that traditional spending on day-to-day IT activities will give way to hand-picked services available through the cloud.

“The role of the chief information officer won’t be so much operations and keeping disks spinning and data centers powered as much as it will be integration and figuring out how procured cloud services fit together,” observes John Halamka, MD, CIO at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

“So you might even imagine that IT departments will start to shrink because so much of what we have done in the past with internal staff will be done with cloud-hosted services,” Halamka continues. “And the great joy of this is that if you don’t like one cloud-hosted service, you can change it. So it’s going to give you some agility.”

NetDirector’s cloud-based HealthData Exchange precisely fits today’s model for disruption with low-cost, high-speed data and document sharing capabilities. For more information on the HealthData Exchange platform, please contact us or request a free demo.

Healthcare Giants Attack Rising Costs, Pursue Greater Efficiency

Whether on the vendor or provider side, the business of healthcare isn’t getting any easier. Across the sector, companies and caregiver organizations are tightening their respective belts while firing up initiatives to increase efficiencies.

At the end of last year’s third quarter, EHR developer athenahealth — which supports a nationwide network of more than 100,000 providers and 100 million patients — reported a 7 percent earnings shortfall. The company simultaneously announced several cost-cutting measures, including a 9 percent workforce reduction, shutdowns of redundant business operations, and sell-offs of real estate assets and a corporate jet.

Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush said the moves reflected the company’s “changing mindset as we evolve the way we do business.”

Additionally, the firm revealed a major follow-up move this month by naming former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as athenahealth chairman. Immelt previously grew GE’s healthcare technology business from fledgling status to a $20 billion operation during his tenure.

Immelt is viewed as a “door opener” and deal closer among hospital and health system C-suite executives, an area where athenahealth has lagged competitors, according to George Hill, an analyst for RBC Capital Markets.

Referring to Immelt’s appointment, Bush added, “Jeff shares our vision for more connected, efficient and human-centered healthcare … Like us, [he] believes a platform-oriented business and technology strategy is fundamental to executing against that vision.”

More Heavy Hitters Step In

Healthcare’s door swung open again recently when the powerhouse trio of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase revealed plans for a partnership aimed at cutting costs and improving services.

Initially, the enterprise will focus on healthcare system improvements for their collective 1.1 million employees. Nonetheless, the independent new company will strive to leverage technology to simplify the healthcare throughout the country.

Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett said combined resources within the group would be tasked with reining in healthcare’s “ballooning” costs while enhancing patient satisfaction and outcomes.

Adam Fein, president of Pembroke Consulting, commented that the new, as-yet-unnamed organization could help physicians and patients make more informed and cost-effective decisions.

Idris Adjerid, management IT professor at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, told CNBC that Amazon, in particular, could play a strong role in bringing artificial intelligence and information-sharing platforms to healthcare. “We find that technology initiatives that facilitated information sharing between disconnected hospitals resulted in significant reductions in healthcare spending,” Adjerid noted.

What remains to be seen, however, is the full scope of the companies’ collaborative effort.

Robert Field, professor of health management and policy at Drexel University, predicted that the alliance would leverage technology to change healthcare delivery across the board. “We’re going to lose the personal touch in healthcare, but perhaps we need to be going in [that] direction,” Field observed. “We don’t have the corner bookshop the way we used to, and we don’t have a corner pharmacy the way we used to. Healthcare is going there one way or another.”

Staying Ahead of the Curve

NetDirector agrees that technological innovation will steer healthcare toward brighter days ahead in terms of fiscal stability and enhanced patient care.

Cloud-based integration and strong record management — hallmarks of NetDirector’s HealthData Exchange platform — create not only cost savings but also greater efficiencies on the non-revenue-generating side of the patient lifecycle. In doing so, the platform increases the number of patients a provider organization can reasonably sustain.

For more information on HealthData Exchange, please contact us or request a free demo.

Workflow-Aware Outreach Contributes to Healthcare Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity presents a huge, ongoing challenge for healthcare organizations across the board. Information systems, medical devices, and patient data must be protected at all times, but many hospitals and practices cannot afford to retain in-house personnel solely dedicated to security. At the same time, they often lack the technology infrastructure needed to identify and track security threats and subsequently translate threat data into action.

What’s more, healthcare workers regularly and mistakenly assume their IT network and supported devices function with a low level of cybersecurity vulnerability.

An industry task force, established by the Cybersecurity Act of 2015, reported to Congress last June with recommendations for shaping an urgent response. The group set forth expectations for healthcare cybersecurity and called for increased protections for and resilience of IT systems and supported devices. The task force also addressed human factors by emphasizing workforce readiness enabled by improved cybersecurity awareness and education.

An Effective Action Plan

Forward-thinking facilities recognize that disparate IT systems and devices must interoperate within a unified scheme. For example, when Marin General Hospital, located north of San Francisco, updated system-wide security in 2016, the executive who led the project went beyond filling in technology gaps.

Jason Johnson, Marin’s chief information security officer, told Healthcare IT News: “We took a different approach to focus on the person and people [involved] because we knew that would be the hardest needle to move and the most difficult to change.”

Johnson’s team instituted mandatory security awareness training, going so far as to integrate it within new employee orientation. Additionally, the project team interviewed clinical staff to gain an understanding of their daily workflows. That effort identified caregivers’ top channels of email communication, which paved the way for the build-out of encryption “tunnels” that could seamlessly lock down emails containing patients’ protected health information.

The results? One year after the project started, Marin reported a 50 percent drop in system vulnerabilities, along with 100 percent staff participation in security awareness efforts. Click rates on malicious emails fell from 63 percent to a practically non-existent 0.5 percent.

Departmental outreach was key, concluded Johnson. “Once people were convinced it was a good idea and everyone was onboard, security became a requirement,” he explained. Every new project or contract now requires a standardized security review.

Integration and the Human Factor

As the Marin case shows, technology integration can flourish through an approach that takes into account human responsibilities on the front lines of care. Healthcare is notorious for dependence on “tribal knowledge” — individualized bits of information residing in staff members’ heads or scribbled on post-it notes — and such vulnerabilities often aren’t readily apparent. However, workflow-based analysis takes into account human factors prior to revamping core processes.

Further, technology such as NetDirector’s HealthData Exchange platform, which automates the sharing of clinical and billing data, frees up labor resources by simplifying the integration process. As a result, care providers can spend more time focusing on patient needs while technologists keep a watchful eye on ever-present compliance and cybersecurity issues.

For more information on HealthData Exchange, please contact us or request a free demo.

On the Horizon: What Healthcare Technology Needs in 2018

The year ahead will usher in an imposing financial squeeze for hospitals across the country. Moody’s Investor Service expects the healthcare sector’s operating cash flow to contract by 2 to 4 percent through 2018 as facilities grapple with lower insurance reimbursements and higher expense growth. Accordingly, hospitals and health systems must leverage information technology (IT) to optimize operations, sustain strategic initiatives and drive disruptive innovations.

Leading organizations will move beyond using IT to automate formerly manual processes. Instead, they’ll build IT-powered business models to align with predictive/ proactive care delivery while empowering patients to take charge of their own health.

As in recent years, healthcare executives remain rightfully concerned about enhancing cybersecurity, countering potential attacks and preparing for response by moving more of their IT infrastructure to the cloud.

They also see competitive opportunities to scale up IT in areas such as consumer-facing technology, data analytics, and virtual care. As such, integration will be key to merging patient-generated data with health records, exploring genomic testing as part of a move toward personalized medicine, and providing reimbursable care or monitoring for remote patients.

Paths Forward

Many industry observers point to cloud-based systems when explaining attempts to “future-proof” technology investments. “[Cloud computing] can offer a dramatically lower total cost of ownership than traditional on-premises solutions by eliminating maintenance fees and upgrade costs, and by requiring much less effort to install and operate,” says Mark LaRow, CEO of patient-matching technology vendor Verato.

At the same time, healthcare organizations stand to benefit from enhancing existing IT platforms, especially where revenue-driving processes and workflows overlap. In particular, providers are looking for ways to facilitate operations through automated insurance eligibility processes, mobile/ online payment applications, and cost estimation tools.

Additionally, advanced hospitals and health systems recognize that increasingly accepted value-based payment models require ongoing patient engagement measures. Advisory firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) notes that providers need to obtain a comprehensive view of patient interactions. “An ability to derive meaningful information from linking disparate data about patients becomes a differentiator for an organization in a competitive market,” comments Winjie Miao, chief experience officer at Texas Health Resources.

Meanwhile, 88 percent of insurers plan investments in technology to improve the healthcare experience for their members. With providers and payers moving toward shared goals in data aggregation and analysis, “2018 could be the year [that] health sectors rally around the patient experience,” according to PwC.

A Platform Built for Integration

NetDirector’s subscription-model integration services fall squarely in line with healthcare organizations’ IT needs in the coming year. From a broad perspective, NetDirector’s HealthData Exchange normalizes data to standard HL7 or other formats, enabling systems to seamlessly share clinical and billing data. While complementing existing IT investments, the platform streamlines clinical workflow and communications while reducing administrative costs.

NetDirector also remains adaptive to changes in the healthcare ecosystem, such as those anticipated for 2018. New integrations can be configured based on evolving customer needs — and on standards and protocols defined by healthcare’s governing bodies.

For more information, please contact us or request a free demo.

NetDirector and myCatalyst Partnership Relieves Data Troubles and Eases Integration Process for Improved Healthcare Outcomes

TAMPA, Fla., Jan. 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — NetDirector, a cloud-based data exchange and integration platform, has further solidified its presence in the healthcare data environment through a partnership with data-centric, actionable analytics and reporting company myCatalyst, Inc. This collaboration will allow both companies to grow their already strong data integration capabilities, and ultimately improve patient care coordination for all their clients.

With a focus on care coordination and P4O reimbursement models through the support of clinically integrated networks, myCatalyst compiles data from all areas and providers involved in member/population health management. myCatalyst surpasses the limits of data warehousing and, with the collaboration of NetDirector, provides seamless integration with other vendor systems. This includes synchronizing member data and providing physicians and employers with the opportunity to develop a proactive, strategic approach.

The partnership focuses on providing a cloud-based, zero-footprint data integration solution that will allow myCatalyst to connect to even more Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems and Hospital Imaging Systems (HIS).

Robin Foust, co-developer and co-owner of myCatalyst, shared that “joining the NetDirector ecosystem will help myCatalyst connect faster with even more EHRs and HIS systems, and provide for better coordination between components of healthcare. This will allow our customers to achieve optimal efficiency and healthcare outcomes through data integration and collaborative care.”

With the volume and quality of data in healthcare continuing to surge, it is important for companies to leverage that data towards population health and information-driven patient care. The combination of NetDirector and myCatalyst allows healthcare providers and organizations to quickly and accurately exchange data through a multitude of interfaces available to them, without doing the heavy lifting themselves and taking on the additional responsibility of managing data in the cloud.

Using results from encounters, assessments, biometric data, medical, pharmacy claims, and more, myCatalyst compiles data onto a dashboard, and provides the tools necessary to enable physician practices to track patient progress, identify gaps in care, and achieve optimal financial and healthcare outcomes, and to provide data analytics and reporting to support the same for the populations and patients being served (ACO, Employers, Clinically Integrated Networks, Direct-To-Primary Care [DPC], and more).

“Our partnership with myCatalyst is a major step towards providers leveraging the wealth of data available to them,” said Harry Beisswenger, CEO of NetDirector. “We’re excited to be able to assist in bringing a service like myCatalyst to more employer groups and healthcare providers efficiently and securely with our cloud-based HealthData Exchange.

More about NetDirector:

NetDirector provides a secure cloud-based data and document exchange solution for the healthcare and mortgage banking industries to deliver seamless data integration between parties. NetDirector bridges gaps created by disparate systems & technologies by allowing companies at any location to share data & documents securely over a single internet connection with any other member of the ecosystem. Our approach allows trading partners to collaborate and exchange data in a seamless, bi-directional, real-time manner. With security and longevity as a focus, NetDirector is a certified HIPAA Compliant and SOC II Type 2 certified company, a 6-year member of the prominent Inc. 5000, and currently processes more than 9 million transactions per month. Learn more at web.netdirector.biz.

More about myCatalyst:

myCatalyst (MCI), is a private Health Information Exchange (HIE) and system support for population health, providing data integration, actionable prescriptive analytics, meaningful reporting, care coordination support, service solutions & more – resulting in optimal financial and healthcare outcomes for populations served, and the organizations serving those populations.  MCI is known for collaborative problem solving to ensure client and program success.

Learn more by contacting: Help@myCatalyst.com

How 2017 Became the Year of Integration

When all’s said and done, 2017 may be best remembered as the year big business put an indelible stamp on healthcare. Sure, we’ve had similar maneuvers in the past from the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft, but each of those initiatives struggled with consumer connection, especially when it came to individuals surrendering their personal health information.

What’s different this time? Drugstore chain CVS Health’s proposed (subject to regulatory approval) buyout of insurance giant Aetna — at $69 billion, the largest health insurance deal in history— could transform pharmacy storefronts into community health clinics, giving patients streamlined access to primary care, medications and insurance services in unified hubs.

Some industry experts acknowledge potential systemic efficiencies that would accompany this type of vertical integration. However, they also caution that consolidation could trigger insurance network restrictions and a move toward “transactional care,” in which patients see doctors for isolated consultation without any established history or context of treatment.

Other observers see the purchase more as a preemptive move by CVS to fend off retail kingpin Amazon’s interest in pharmaceutical distribution (particularly for expensive and difficult-to-obtain specialty drugs). Amazon has acquired pharmacy licenses in 12 states and has kicked off discussions with generic drugmakers, according to media reports.

Whatever the true motivation — and it very well could be a combination of all factors outlined above — healthcare models are undeniably trending toward large-scale integration as 2017 draws to a close. And that’s sure to bring opportunities and challenges to stakeholders, including IT companies, along the way.

Integration in Various Forms

As 2017 began, advisory firms counseled hospital executives to integrate clinical delivery with financial sustainability in preparation for almost certain payment cuts. One health system followed such a course, slashing annual operating costs by $12 million in just six months by focusing solely on reducing excess lengths of stay. That type of integration works around mutual biases: (1) clinicians worrying that cost-cutting would jeopardize care quality and (2) financial teams perceiving doctors’ resistance to data analysis that would measure costs.

Meanwhile, along healthcare’s leading edge, IT initiatives pushed forward throughout the year. “I believe an urgent priority for our healthcare system is to move from the traditional one-to-one model to a more efficient, time- and place-independent care delivery system,” commented Joseph Kvedar, MD, vice president of connected health at Partners Healthcare.

Kvedar’s remarks accompanied the Personal Connected Health Alliance’s release of new design guidelines for sharing patient-generated health data with providers via HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) specifications. The guidelines support data integration into electronic health records (EHRs) from 26 vital signs sensors and 40 health/ medical/ fitness devices for remote monitoring of chronic diseases, as well as health and fitness measures.

In related ways, we saw positive disruption in data exchange between payers and providers, setting the stage for real-time alerts that would help prescribing physicians prevent drug-drug interactions or other potentially harmful outcomes.

Additionally, EHR vendors did their part to integrate cloud-based versions of traditional systems, bringing cost-effective processes and simplified technology contracting to small hospitals and physician practices.

As we witnessed, a lot can happen over the course of a year. Continued progress in integration will depend on straightforward but flexible options for sharing data and documents across the healthcare ecosystem. NetDirector offers those exact capabilities in its HealthData Exchange platform so that care facilities don’t have to worry about managing — and staying ahead of — the ever-changing technology curve.

For more information, please contact us or request a free demo.

Cloud Services Advancing in Healthcare Technology

Nine hospitals across the country have filed for bankruptcy thus far in 2017. Small facilities, in particular, continue to feel the pinch from a combination of dwindling patient volume, rising capital requirements, escalating costs of care, bad debt accruals and lack of Medicaid funding.

Clearly, something needs to be done to stem the flow of red ink.

Fortunately, we’re seeing a healthy response from health IT vendors, who’ve identified an opportunity among the chaos. Electronic health record (EHR) firms Meditech, athenahealth and eClinicalWorks have rolled out cloud-based versions of their platforms aimed at bringing cost-effective processing and simplified technology contracting to the small-hospital domain.

Even EHR stalwart Epic is joining the movement. On Nov. 1, Tahoe Forest Health System, which serves two rural counties across 3,500 square miles in California and Nevada, went live with a new version of Epic’s EHR. The health system’s CFO, Crystal Betts, anticipates “significant savings without the maintenance of eight EHRs and [retirement of] a host of third-party ancillary systems no longer needed.” Betts added, “The cherry on top is time saved and a boost to quality and safety with a tightly integrated EHR that just works.”

Likewise, athenahealth’s cloud-based EHR has made a significant impact at Coastal Orthopedics (Conway, S.C.), which implemented the technology a little over a year ago to replace separate EHR and practice management systems. “We wanted to be in a position to jump in quickly and effectively as population health management becomes [our] new top-of-mind issue,” noted practice administrator Andrew Wade. With the EHR taking on redundant data-collection tasks, providers and staff have been able to spend more time on patient care.

Above and Beyond

Meanwhile, the healthcare research/ academic community is also leveraging the power of cloud computing. For example, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, scientists and physicians have access to more than 100 terabytes of data generated by DNA sequences as they study the molecular basis of breast and ovarian cancer. They use Amazon Web Services’ cloud to support a genomics platform that dynamically scales to analyze tens of thousands of genomes in a matter of minutes.

In short, cloud computing has enabled management to shift from worrying about data storage, performance, and security to helping researchers understand the sequenced output data.

There’s more to come, too. “The cloud is poised to play a prominent role when healthcare organizations deploy telemedicine, mobile health applications, and remote monitoring tools — trends that are inevitable as organizations implement value-based care programs,” according to a HIMSS Analytics cloud computing survey.

Pathway to Progress

As healthcare organizations continue to put their faith in the cloud, they’re looking for partners who can facilitate implementation and replace layers of internal systems management and integration. And, not coincidentally, they want to do so with predictable ongoing costs.

NetDirector’s cloud-based HealthData Exchange fits the desired profile by normalizing data and documents to achieve EHR interoperability with an expanding array of trading partners, including physician groups, labs, registries and imaging centers. Subscription pricing meshes with organizations’ emerging reliance on scalable services made possible by cloud technology.

For more information, please contact us or request a free demo.

Healthcare, Ransomware, and Security Breaches

Ransomware, a treacherous malware exploit that encrypts victims’ data or prevents access to their devices, netted cybercriminals an estimated $1 billion in 2016.

Data-related extortion attacks on businesses rose three-fold during the first nine months of last year, equating to one every 40 seconds. Two-thirds of those hit by ransomware lost all or part of their corporate data and one-quarter spent weeks trying to restore access, according to Kaspersky Labs, a data security firm.

Perhaps even more alarming is a predicted shift from chaotic and sporadic ransomware incidents to steadier assaults in higher volumes. “There is no such thing as a low-risk sector anymore,” Kaspersky’s research warned.

Healthcare, with 16 percent of organizations having been hit by ransomware, ranks in the top 10 among targeted industries.

High stakes for healthcare

Hospitals and health systems, as HIPAA covered entities, must adopt safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of electronic protected health information (ePHI). The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces HIPAA, issued guidance in 2016 presuming a breach in the event of a ransomware attack involving ePHI. In other words, it’s up to the provider organization to prove that a breach did not occur by demonstrating low probability that ePHI was not compromised.

Nonetheless, many organizations remain non-compliant or take a stance of “calculated non-compliance.” That means they deem any potential fine to be cheaper than the reporting costs or technical resources needed to investigate incidents to OCR’s satisfaction, according to James Scott, senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology.

All the same, providers should be concerned whether ePHI is properly encrypted and adequately protected against compromise by ransomware. And from a system-wide perspective, additional safeguards should include proper use of passwords, removal of outdated software and unauthorized apps, adherence to regular backup procedures, and educating users not to open attachments or click links from unknown senders. Additionally, operating systems, browsers and antivirus programs should be updated to the latest version on all devices.

Also worth noting: Security shortfalls may be present in system integrations written in-house or by contracted developers.

In any event, “negligence gives cyber criminals the incentive to continue to launch ransomware attacks,” notes security website CSO.

And — as if on cue — a newly discovered form of ransomware may be released this month, reports TechRepublic. The malware, known as RedBoot, not only encrypts files but also permanently repartitions hard drives, rendering data unrecoverable. The alert advises businesses to back up workstations to some form of network or cloud storage, refresh all antivirus software definitions, and train users to avoid phishing scams.

A big ask

Hospitals have their hands full providing the best care possible for patients, around the clock, every day of the week. In that light, they shouldn’t be expected to shoulder the entire load of locking down data against an ever-expanding array of intruders.

Networking companies such as NetDirector have the expertise and capabilities needed to properly secure and integrate healthcare data. All of our certifications and processes (e.g., HIPAA and SOC2) are maintained above industry standards in a fully redundant, cloud-based platform. Healthcare clients put their trust in NetDirector to securely handle more than 10 million data and document transactions per month.

Although ransomware and related intrusions are real concerns, NetDirector stands ready to consult and assist in hardening defenses across the healthcare ecosystem.

For more information, please contact us or request a free demo.

Why EHRs Don’t Have to be a Hindrance

Doctors persistently claim that electronic health record (EHR) systems take up too much of their time.

Bearing out that assertion, a just-published study in Annals of Family Medicine found that a cohort of 142 primary care physicians spent more than half their workday interacting with their EHR during and after clinic hours. Worse, the physicians, who were retrospectively followed through EHR event logs over the course of three years, allocated two-thirds of their computer-facing time to clerical and inbox work.

A separate commentary earlier this year issued a stark challenge to the healthcare IT industry: “[Talk] to ten practitioners at random who are involved in day-to-day emergency medicine or primary care medicine, the guys and gals on the busy front line, and find two of them who are enamored with their [EHR] tools.” The author, small-town physician Kenneth Bartholomew, MD, describes systems designed around billing and collections functions. Such EHRs, he argues, lack the ability to actually improve the workflow of diagnosis and patient management.

Closing the gap on EHR drawbacks

The clearly frustrated Dr. Bartholomew concludes that current EHRs put the wrong tools in the hands of everyday caregivers. While EHRs help assemble patient history, along with physical and laboratory evidence, the technology requires doctors to “push the chain” of information from behind — rather than “pulling it from the front.”

Nonetheless, it’s also important to recognize EHRs’ positive impacts within a digital, connected healthcare environment. Evidence of benefits include:

  • cost savings derived from prevention of adverse drug events;
  • enabling access by emergency personnel to patients’ pre-existing health information (such as medication lists, allergies, and medical histories);
  • use of medical histories to remind physicians of the best methods of care for specific patients; and
  • improvement of reporting, investigation, response, and communication between public health officials and clinicians.

What’s more, EHRs have been shown to mitigate risk for healthcare providers and health systems by enabling evidence-based decisions at the point of care, aiding in research directed toward improvements in care, and preventing liability actions by documenting complete records of care and informed consent.

Also, significant, EHRs can help drive up patient satisfaction. More than 90 percent of patients report being happy that their doctor used EHR-powered e-prescribing capabilities — and that they rarely encounter prescriptions not being ready at their connected pharmacy.

EHRs and interoperability

Looking ahead, the federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has prioritized enhancing EHR usability, as well as facilitating seamless exchange of information among different EHR systems. In fact, the 21st Century Cures Act, enacted at the end of 2016, specifies the development of a national framework and common agreement to promote comprehensive network-to-network health data sharing. ONC will be organizing work in these areas and expects to have preliminary plans in place by next year.

NetDirector actively supports strong, automated integration of EHR capabilities throughout the healthcare ecosystem. Hospitals and physicians can deploy NetDirector’s HealthData Exchange to normalize data to standard HL7 and other formats to achieve EHR interoperability while removing the bottlenecks of traditional interfacing — all without adding hours to the physician’s already hectic schedule.

For more information, please contact us or request a free demo.

NetDirector Enters Comprehensive Agreement to Partner with My Constant Care, LLC for Integration Services

TAMPA, Fla., Sept. 28, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — NetDirector, a cloud-based data exchange and integration platform, has expanded their Integration-Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) offerings once again. A strong partnership has been forged with My Constant Care, LLC to provide them with a cloud based integration suite for the already cloud-centric company.

My Constant Care (MCC) provides a unified cloud-based platform for integration and delivery of preventive services such as Annual Wellness Visits, Chronic Care Management, Advanced Care Planning, and Preventative Screenings. Their turnkey delivery model provides patients with the full spectrum of preventive services to enhance overall care delivery without disrupting day-to-day operations of the practice. My Constant Care focuses on maximizing value to both providers and patients. They do this with expert coordination of preventive care options available today while strategically shaping these services to meet performance requirements expected of their future providers in the future. They offer a no-financial-risk solution to the physicians, providing the staff, software, and technology to perform their services.

Utilizing the cloud for integration was a clear next step to elevate the services offered by MCC. NetDirector’s One-to-Many style integration allows MCC to connect to NetDirector once and exchange data seamlessly with EHR systems, billing platforms, and more as the hub expands. Now, MCC’s services can integrate with existing provider platforms as well as future additions to a provider’s suite of technology solutions without relying on internal resources to bridge the gap between solutions.

“My Constant Care helps primary care physicians provide a level of service to their Medicare population previously not achievable by small practices,” says Kellie Privette, the Director of Sales and Business Development at MCC. Privette added that “NetDirector’s integration expertise and technology allows MCC to seamless transfer patient data into their customer’s EHR and billing systems, without double entry of a substantial amount of information.”

This integration also increases a provider’s compliance, allowing even small practices to provide the quality and timeliness of service of a larger provider while maintaining and exceeding compliance standards for the healthcare technology industry. By eliminating data entry steps and automating the exchange of patient information securely, the integration allows for providers utilizing My Constant Care to focus more on the patients, and less on the technology behind the scenes.

“We’re very enthusiastic about our partnership with My Constant Care,” said Harry Beisswenger, CEO of NetDirector. “Their services fill a gap in the healthcare industry, and we’re looking forward to helping them achieve their goals of seamless preventive care for everyone.”

Company Bio:

NetDirector provides a secure cloud-based data and document exchange solution for the healthcare and mortgage banking industries to deliver seamless data integration between parties. NetDirector bridges gaps created by disparate systems & technologies by allowing companies at any location to share data & documents securely over a single internet connection with any other member of the ecosystem. Our approach allows trading partners to collaborate and exchange data in a seamless, bi-directional, real-time manner. With security and longevity as a focus, NetDirector is a certified HIPAA Compliant and SOC II Type 2 certified company, a 6-year member of the prominent Inc. 5000, and currently processes more than 8 million transactions per month.