CEO Spotlight: Former ONC chief Farzad Mostashari on EHR shortcomings and pop health potential

Farzad Mostashari, MD, has a unique vantage point over the health information technology industry. Previously he served as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Today he is founder and CEO of Aledade, a company that markets technology and services designed to help independent primary care practices come together to form accountable care organizations (ACOs) that can take on the total cost of care and share in value created.

Aledade operates ACOs across 11 states and handles nearly 100,000 patients in more than 110 physician practices. In June 2015, the company raised a Series B Funding Round of $30 million and now employs a staff of more than 80 experts in health policy, technology and practice transformation. This growth, the company said, is driven by the need of primary care physicians to begin the shift from volume-based care to value-based care with the aim of delivering better care at a lower cost.

Healthcare IT News spoke with Mostashari about about a variety of topics, from ACOs and technology trends to EHR shortcomings.

Q: What is the state of technology within accountable care organizations? What must technology do, and what is the role of population health within an ACO?
A: One way to think about the role of technology here is the electronic health record is the transactional piece of healthcare where a patient’s care needs to be delivered. But it does not address very well – despite many years of effort on the part of meaningful use and other programs – the concept of population health. So the needs from a population health tool perspective are, first, get the data, so there is a whole lot of infrastructure work around assembling and integrating claims data, clinical data, ADT data, event notifications from hospitals, practice management system data, and scheduling system data. And then, collecting data from the use of apps to understand what physician practices are doing and what they need to be doing. For the full article click here 

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