Electronic Health Records are critical to succeed in healthcare service, but they are not enough.From a healthcare provider’s perspective, after spending a lot of money and time on EHR, reluctance to evaluate other solutions for population health management or “accountable care” can be understood. So, healthcare providers are choosing to wait for their EHR to evolve in order to address new demands associated with taking on and managing risk. But according to industry analysts this can be a long wait as wide range of functions are going far beyond what EHRs were built to do. Here analytics tools and solutions come to the rescue. Performing analytics using clinical and claims data, organizations can gain deep insight into patients, population, and performance, predict outcomes and rapidly identify the actions needed for improvement. This insight can be gained through a wide range of analytics solutions that deliver retrospective views of activity, ongoing surveillance of current activity, predictive modelling of future activity, as well as root-cause analysis.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://ehrintelligence.com/2014/04/09/why-moving-beyond-the-ehr-is-needed-for-population-health/

The 25-bed critical access Monadnock Community Hospital faced a huge deficit as a direct result of an unexpected ice-storm that hit the state of New Hampshire in December 2008, causing a two-week power outage. The hospital was in deep financial trouble.Fortunately for the hospital and the region, the hospital management had decided to look into various options to bail the hospital out of this crisis. The hospital's lab department had some success following a lean Six Sigma model, so the hospital authority pursued the strategy hospital-wide. Mr. Peter L. Gosline, president and CEO of Monadnock Community Hospital, had highlighted the success of the hospital's five-year "lean" journey during the American College of Healthcare Executive's 2014 Congress in Chicago, a model that he estimates has saved the organization $1 million a year!

To read more, visit the link address given below:

http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/how-lean-strategies-saved-nh-critical-access-hospital-financial-ruin/2014-04-07

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced the last date for the third round of new applications for 2015 Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). The following five key decisions will help organizations before joining the MSSP program. They are:

•        Estimate the number of Medicare beneficiaries for whom the prospective ACO(Accountable Care Organizations) wants to be accountable.

•        Determine an appropriate contracting vehicle through which to operate the ACO.

•        Consider the types of health care professionals and facilities the prospective ACO should target as participants.   

•         Set expectations for prospective ACO participants in advance.

•        Gather the appropriate staff to address particular aspects of the MSSP Application early and set milestones in advance of submission deadlines where possible.

To read more about this aspect, please visit Stephanie D. Willis’s (Associate of Mintz Levin) article link as given below: http://www.natlawreview.com/article/five-key-decisions-acos-accountable-care-organization-looking-to-participate-2015-ms 

Data complexity is a major challenge faced by the healthcare industry. Now healthcare industry is going through a transformation phase. So companies like General Electric, 3M CO, Siemens and Xerox Corporation are taking initiatives to gain insights for making healthcare processes more efficient by the use of predictive analytics.

Read more at: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/analytics-a-shot-in-the-arm-for-healthcare-analyst-blog-cm337055

Nowadays patients are demanding more and higher quality healthcare provisions. These have posed challenges to the healthcare facilities. Insurance companies in the healthcare sector are striving to keep claims at minimal. In most of the cases, these companies bear a negative perception in the minds of patients which forces them to leave hospitals prematurely. Also, they do not get critical treatments or medicines.

However, a shift is taking place with Lean Six Sigma’s holistic approach. Insurance companies are now looking for effective ways to bring their costs down while at the same time providing medical cover for improved healthcare provisions.

CIGNA, a health insurance company describes how it is using Six Sigma to bring down medical costs while simultaneously improving the outcomes. To know about it, please click here: http://ciaranmay.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/focusing-power-of-ss-in-healthcare-insurance-industry.pdf

Communication is an absolute essential entity to allow successful improvement in healthcare industry. Effective communication will allow relevant and correct flow of data through the organization. With more relevant data, analysis will also be more accurate and will automatically lead to improvement in the healthcare industry.

Please go through the link for more details http://healthcareanalytics.info/2012/03/successful-healthcare-improvement-requires-analytics-and-effective-communications/#.UyhlIqIyX4s

Six sigma can help healthcare providers to improve patient care and reduce uncertainty for care givers. This article speaks about how six sigma can be introduced in healthcare industry and improve the quality of care givers.

For more details please visit http://www.isixsigma.com/industries/healthcare/applying-six-sigma-patient-care

Balancing privacy, policy, and innovation is important to achieve harmony in health care, but, it is also difficult. While both population health and patient centered care seek to improve health care, at some level they are fundamentally at odds. Managing the health of population in a sustainable and scalable way requires uniformity of care across large groups for prevention, wellness, resource utilization, etc. Often, the most predictive clues about our health, exist in information that lives outside of traditional health care. This can be unearthed with the help of new innovations in Big Data. With the right policies and safeguards in place, trust can be established that will give individuals greater comfort and confidence to share information with their healthcare providers.

Harry Greenspun, MD and Senior Advisor for Health Care Technology and Transformation at the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions talks more about it here: http://blogs.deloitte.com/centerforhealthsolutions/2014/03/balancing-privacy-policy-and-innovation-to-achieve-harmony-in-health-care.html?id=gx:2sm:3tw:chsblog:awa:chs:032214:deloittehealth#

Healthcare organizations are becoming proficient at creating and storing terabytes of data each month. Unfortunately, their skills to transform that data into knowledge and useful information are not quite so impressive.

The major primary obstacles to widespread analytics adoption are:-

·         Culture does not encourage sharing information.

·         Lack of understanding how to use analytics to improve the business.

·         Ownership of the data is unclear or governance is ineffective.

Please go through the link for more details:

http://healthcareanalytics.info/2013/11/three-main-barriers-to-widespread-analytics-use-in-healthcare-organizations/#.UyhkhqIyX4s

In USA, approx. 8o% of hospitals are using electronic health records, due to which it is possible to gather useful information for research & development. Now healthcare industries are actively looking for transformation of its major areas by meaningful use of analytics.

To know about its challenges and impact, please go through the link: http://ehrintelligence.com/2014/03/17/for-healthcare-analytics-you-need-to-have-goals-in-sight/

Steven Rust, Ph.D., “the Battelle’s Inventor of the Year”, developed and demonstrated a very useful analytical tool which can predict risk associated with a patient in such a way that it can be prevented in an early stage.

 Please go through the link for more details:http://www.battelle.org/media/press-releases/rust-is-battelle-inventor-of-the-year

It is estimated by the research firm, Gartner, that in the year 2014, healthcare providers of India will spend approx. $1.08 billion specially to improve technological supports and IT infrastructure. R Chandrashekhar, President, Nasscom, said healthcare sector will focus more on implementing information technology to enhance their value chain.

Please go through the link for more details: http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-healthcare-to-contribute-1-billion-to-it-sector-in-2014-gartner-1966870

A blog by Carlos Centurion, President, River Logic Solutions, talks about the third phase of analytics i.e. prescriptive analytics. Prescriptive analytics helps not only to anticipate what will happen and when will it happen, but also why will it happen.

Healthcare providers are using various tools of prescriptive analytics to enhance their performance and efficiency.  It also helps the provider to take better decisions. To know more about Prescriptive Analytics in Healthcare Provider Industry, please follow this link:

http://www.riverlogic.com/2014/02/prescriptive-analytics-healthcare-provider-industry/