IT Infrastructure for Accountable Care Organizations
The spectrum of functional needs that must be supported by ACO IT infrastructure is quite wide. There are three broad functional categories under which IT needs of ACOs can be classified:
1. Clinical - functionality related to care coordination, integrated health records and advanced clinical decision support capability. These functions primarily target improving clinical outcomes and reducing cost of care.
2. Operational - supports business operations that can be integrated across participating providers. The objective of these IT functions is to reduce operational costs and ensure higher cost savings for ACOs.
3. Analytical - all the analytical needs of ACOs as discussed in my previous blog.
Under first category, ICS must support integrated E.H.R, risk stratification, preventive care and chronic disease management for the patient population. To reduce healthcare costs through seamless continuity of care, ICS must be integrated with nursing homes, long-term care centers, senior living facilities and hospices. ICS needs to support home-health and telemedicine through medical device integration and necessary workflows for the same. ACOs can leverage Health 2.0 platform for patient education and enablement for active participation in their healthcare. Health 2.0 can also be leveraged for collaboration across physicians, healthcare staff, patients and caregivers. All these functions have two pronged impact of improving quality of care and reducing cost of care which will result in ACOs registering greater cost savings which will in turn translate to higher shared benefits.
Another set of IT needs for ACOs could be those needed to support integrated operations across the participating providers. There are several operational areas where providers in ACOs can have integrated operations to reduce cost of care. For eg- integrated supply chain management has been proven to deliver significant cost savings. Integrating operations can help a lot in ensuring cost savings which is essential for sustenance of ACO model.
My previous blog emphasizes the significance of integrated clinical, operational and financial analytics in helping ACOs achieve their objectives. Integrated analytics will provide a clear line-of-sight into inefficient operational areas and their domino effect on quality of care as well as cost of care. ACOs also need to analyze historical data for various disease progression paths and the cost associated with them. Strong analytics is the most important IT infrastructure need of ACOs.
Comments
Is Infosys really into Integrated Clinical System (ICS)? I have been on the look out for an Indian IT major with interest in this aspect. It is a tough job to create a platform which will suit different specialties and subspecialties of medicine. But creating one with inbuilt provision for collection of research data is really needed in our country with very little data of our own regarding various disorders. Why not Infosys take this up as a joint venture with a national body like the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) as part of your corporate social responsibility? I am aware that ICMR is taking steps to build registries of various important disorders. The implementation of a good Integrated Clinical System (ICS) on a national scale at multiple major medical institutions will make their task easier.
Posted by: Johnson Francis | February 22, 2011 5:21 PM