Healthcare IT News - August 2008 - (Page 30)

30 Healthcare IT News August 2008 ■ www.HealthcareITNews.com NEWSBRIEFS NEW JERSEY INVESTS $500,000 IN PATIENT SAFETY Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey will be the first in the nation to invest in electronic medical history technology for select network hospitals. It will spend up to $500,000 on the project. Horizon BCBSNJ is providing 85 percent of the costs of the technology up to $40,000. As many as eight network hospitals, which will receive varying amounts of financing, are expected to join the program by the end of 2008. L.A. community clinics win health IT grants Awards help bridge the digital divide in healthcare. By PaTTy ENrado, Contributing Editor LOS ANGELES – SE WIScoNSIN oFFERED HEALTHcARE coMPARISoN TooL Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Wisconsin has expanded its healthcare cost comparison tool to southeastern Wisconsin. Anthem Care Comparison, an online-based resource, allows members to evaluate the cost of common medial procedures between providers and locations in order to facilitate healthcare decisionmaking. The tool accesses the typical costs associated with all aspects of a specific medical procedure, from lab tests to recovery room charges. Care Comparison generates this information while also factoring in hospital, physician, and anesthesia costs to help provide a more accurate total cost analysis. The L.A. Care Health Plan has awarded $2 million through its HIT initiative to nine community clinics to implement health IT systems. The awards are part of a comprehensive approach among the health plan and local foundations to provide community-based health centers with funds to acquire HIT systems and learning collaboration and tools to ensure the investments’ full value, said Roland Palencia, director of community benefit programs for L.A. Care. The grants are intended to drive HIT adoption for improved quality of care and patient safety as well as address the industry’s digital divide. “Health IT disparities translates to health disparities for lowincome and minorities,” he said. A prerequisite for the grant was participation in Phase I of the Building Clinic Capacity for Quality (BCCQ) program, which included helping assess clinics’ readiness for HIT. The AltaMed Health Services Corp., which serves 100,000 residents across 32 sites in three counties, will replace its practice management system and implement an electronic health record The AltaMed Health Services Corp. in Los Angeles will replace its practice management system and install an electronic medical record system with a grant from the L.A. Care Health Plan. system, both from NextGen. “There are so many access points for our mobile population that one of the major issues we want to address is coordinated quality of care,” said CIO Angela Roberts. “We can’t do that in a paper-based system.” The EHR will enable AltaMed to coordinate care and ensure that patients’ treatment plans are being followed, as well as enable data analysis for quality graNTs see page 31 N.C. health plan finds value in predictive modeling By PaTTy ENrado, Contributing Editor PINEHURST, NC – FirstCarolinaCare Insurance HEALTHEDGE PARTNERS WITH IGI To MARKET IT FoR PAYERS Burlington, Mass.-based HealthEdge has partnered with Piscataway N.J.based Infotech Global (IGI) to deliver its HealthRules product suite to the market. The suite is a benefits and claims administration, business intelligence, and portal application for healthcare payers. IGI’s certified HealthRules deployment engineers will provide a full range of services to HealthEdge clients including system installation, configuration, testing, training, data conversion and project management. Company, a provider-owned health plan covering 13,000 lives in six counties, implemented DST Health Solutions’ CareAnalyzer in March to automate its Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) reporting. CareAnalyzer’s predictive modeling capability enabled the health plan to run reports throughout the year and identify members who weren’t being compliant or who weren’t getting the services needed, said COO Craig Humphrey. FirstCarolinaCare realized efficiencies in the medical management side, and the identification in the early stages of disease states resulted in decreased numbers of in-patient admissions and surgeries. The application will also help with projecting actual costs and understanding where those costs originated, bringing more credibility to the health plan’s rate-setting process, keeping premiums Craig Humphrey down and lowering medical trends – all critical for a smaller, regional health plan in a competitive market, Humphrey said. FirstCarolinaCare will be able to report its compliance rate for HEDIS measures to its network physicians and members, with the goal of showing improvement from 2007 to 2008, he added. FirstCarolinaCare will use the data to do a bet- ter job of identifying patients with chronic conditions and getting them into case management. Rather than intervention, the current trend is prospective care management, minimizing negative outcomes through wellness programs and preventive services for patients with co-morbidities, said Amy Salls, business solutions director of decision support for DST Health Solutions. The combination of gaps-in-care methodology, HEDIS and NCQA with The Johns Hopkins University ACG Predictive Models enables care managers to identify and enroll more high-risk candidates and improve case open rates, Salls said. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: ModeliNG 0808 ● Clinical decision support tool assists in imaging test orders By PaTTy ENrado, Contributing Editor IT PRoVIDER INKS SAAS DEAL WITH HEALTH PARTNERS Healthation, a healthcare technology company, has signed a 10-year Software-as-a Service-agreement with Health Partners, a not-for-profit health plan serving more than 140,000 members in southeastern Pennsylvania. Health Partners will implement AboveHealth, an e-business healthcare portal to deliver interactive, real-time communication and administration capabilities to its provider community. Healthation’s AboveHealth Self Service Web Portal supports payers’ Web self-service and automated e-business strategies. More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: PaYerS 0808 ● The Beth Israel Deaconess Physician Organization’s implementation of a clinical decision support system at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for diagnostic imaging services has delivered ROI to providers, payer and patients. Since 2006, BIDMC has continued to outperform the statewide trend of rising rates for high-tech radiology use, according to Richard Parker, MD, the organization’s medical director. SafeMed ’s CDS system enables physicians to make real-time intelligent decisions regarding the appropriateness of tests, ranked by safety and BOSTON – relative cost. The system aggregates administrative and clinical requirements by BIDPO, BIDMC and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, evidence-based medical guidelines and data derived from the specific patient’s medical record. The CDS system is configured to enable electronic pre-certification for BCBSMA members, which streamlines the notification process and thereby reduces time and resources associated with the traditional paper and telephone pre-certification process. BCBSMA sponsored a pilot of the system through funding of the implementation and suPPorT see page 31 America wants its candidates to address the cost of healthcare A survey asked respondents which one of the following healthcare issues they would most like to hear the 2008 presidential candidates talk about: 5% 7% 50% 24% 6% 9% N = 1,206, survey taken June 3-8, 2008. e ● Connect: GraPHS 0808 SouRCE: kAISER fAMIly fouNdATIoN. http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9698 http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9700

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Healthcare IT News - August 2008 Contents Closer to IT Bill PHIN or RHIOs? Making Leaps After the Flood Tidal Change Denmark Bound Bridging the Divide Robot That Could Mobile Computing Data Everywhere

Healthcare IT News - August 2008

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