WEDI: ‘Robust’ Health IT System, Data Analytics Key to ACOs

An interoperable health IT infrastructure is key to the success of accountable care organizations, according to an issue brief released by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange, EHR Intelligencereports (Murphy, EHR Intelligence, 9/28).

Details of Issue Brief

The paper was released by WEDI’s Payment Models Workgroup. It outlined barriers and best practices for ACOs and offered questions to consider when developing future guidance.

Among topics addressed in the issue brief were:

• Data and analytics;
• Health IT infrastructure; and
• Population health management (Dvorak, FierceHealthIT, 9/28).

Findings

Overall, the report stated, “Successful financial, clinical, population health and risk management of an ACO is dependent upon a strong health IT infrastructure and an ability to exchange health data across disparate systems and setting.”

The issue brief noted that the health IT infrastructure for ACOs typically starts with electronic health records and then is layered with additional components that support:

• Clinical documentation;
• Data analytics;
• Patient engagement and communication;
• Revenue cycle management;
• Risk management; and
• Quality measurement and improvement.

Some ACOs also participate in health information exchanges (EHR Intelligence, 9/28).

According to the issue brief, interoperability becomes more important as ACOs mature and add such components (FierceHealthIT, 9/28).

However, the brief noted that “most ACOs are not currently able to seamlessly push or pull complete patient health data in an accessible and timely manner — and until they are able to do so, many organizations will find themselves fundamentally handicapped in their ability to meet operational objectives” (EHR Intelligence, 9/28).

Meanwhile, WEDI also said that ACOs increasingly will need new technologies to analyze the troves of health data collected from patients.

The authors said that ACOs will need to:

• Consider the “pain points” for collection, measurement and exchange of health data; and
• Determine whether there is a business case for implementing predictive and prescriptive analytics.

The brief noted that such health IT infrastructures and data analytics capabilities will be necessary to support ACOs’ population health management efforts (FierceHealthIT, 9/28).

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