Tag Archives: conferences

The Intimate Dissection of Healthcare Reform at the 8th Annual AHCC

Posted on by

Reform is a loaded word. At the 8th Annual American Health Care Congress, the challenges, strategies and objectives of healthcare reform were intimately dissected.

Among executives and thought leaders from across the healthcare industry at the two-day congress, the topic of value was a major focus point. The integration of new delivery models and providing value through collaborative partnerships between hospitals, physicians and healthcare was set as the ultimate task at hand, regarding healthcare reform.

Value is both a challenge we face and an outcome we hope to achieve. Throughout the discussions on innovation and strategies for enhancing quality, integration, engagement, outcomes and so forth, value was defined in a variety of ways. Included here, are highlights from sessions at the two-day congress.

  • On Clinical Integration Strategies for Improved Outcomes and Reduced Costs, speakers Robert Pryor, president CEO of Scott & White Healthcare and Douglas Strong, CEO of University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, offered some valuable insight on their approaches to transitioning to value-based care with a consumer focused business model, sharing core competencies and delivering value through risk sharing partnerships, and creating employee engagement.
  • On Managing Financial Risks of Accountable Care – New Health Care Delivery Models, speaker Richard Afable, president and CEO of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, shared some forward thinking ideas regarding new health care delivery models and how Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter’s idea of ‘shared value’ has really influenced their business model at Hoag.

‘Achieving high value for patients must become the overarching goal of health care delivery, with value defined as the health outcomes achieved per dollar spent. This goal is what matters for patients and unites the interests of all actors in the system. If value improves, patients, payers, providers, and suppliers can all benefit while the economic sustainability of the health care system increases.

The failure to prioritize value improvement in health care delivery and to measure value has slowed innovation, led to ill-advised cost containment, and encouraged micromanagement of physicians’ practices, which imposes substantial costs of its own. Measuring value will also permit reform of the reimbursement system so that it rewards value by providing bundled payments covering the full care cycle or, for chronic conditions, covering periods of a year or more. Aligning reimbursement with value in this way rewards providers for efficiency in achieving good outcomes while creating accountability for substandard care.’

Afable went on to provide examples in which value can be created that includes innovative, market based cost reductions; exceptional patient experiences; superior, safe, consistent clinical outcomes; and demonstrates improvements in the health of a community.

  • On Revolutionizing American Health Care using 21st Century Information Technology, Robert Pearl, Executive Director and CEO of Permanente Medical Group, ended with a demand for innovation. Through the adoption of new delivery models, real value can be achieved. “Choice is more important than circumstance. We must offer the same convenience and capabilities to Americans to provide a high value quality of care and enable health care reform.”

SBR News: Recap of Mid-West BluePrint Health IT Summit

Posted on by

This post is part of our recap series. As mentioned a few weeks ago, SBR Health was chosen as a finalist for the Mid-West BluePrint Health IT Innovation Exchange Summit in Indiana. Below, CMO of SBR Health, Peter Eggleston has given an overview of the events of this summit.

In the 25-minute matching sessions, where brief presentations or demos were allowed, providers and Innovators were asked to set milestones for next steps if the match appeared to be worthwhile. They either set dates and steps for next steps for further evaluation or plans to set up a pilot or test-bed opportunity.

[source]

SBR Health had a jammed packed day at the recent Mid-West BluePrint Health IT Innovation Exchange Summit in Indianapolis, IN.  We were one of ten companies coming together from eight states across the nation to meet innovation and business development representatives from nine healthcare providers and payers.  The format was excellent – 15 minutes for both the company and provider/payer to get to know each other and see if there were any areas of mutual interest, then 30 minute sessions for deeper dives to explore ways in which to potentially work together. Videos of some of the general meetings can be seen on the summits website, under Innovation Videos.

While we can’t talk about the specifics of these meetings, I would like to share some areas of interest that seemed to be common in terms of top of mind. Care coordination and patient connectivity seemed to be the largest common problem organizations were seeking solutions for and was on everyone’s “shopping list.”  This was followed by improving care transitions and management of complex and high risk patients, especially after discharge. In a similar vein, there was a lot of interest expressed in care delivery solutions into the home, mobile technologies, and several organizations looking for technologies to support “e-visits” and remote patient management solutions. Mobile technologies was expressed in a variety of ways, and seemed to be delivery or engagement mechanism that was overlaid onto the other desires above, rather than a category of interest by itself.

Overall, the Blueprint format seemed to work well, and I was surprised by how quickly everyone engaged and how effective the format was. In fact, I overheard one hospital administrator comment “I wish all my vendor meetings were only 15 minutes long!”

If you attended the Mid-West BluePrint Summit, or have been to a similar setting where you were engaging in brief, but useful meetings, please comment below about your experiences.

SBR Health: 8th Annual American Health Care Congress Exhibition

Posted on by

SBR Health will be at the 8th Annual American Health Care Congress Exhibition to explore and evaluate post-reform integration strategies, innovative business and care delivery models, as well as health IT. Featuring two days of educational and networking opportunities, SBR is excited to join other innovators and health care executives to address the present and future challenges facing health care reform, and find solutions for improving the delivery of care.

Innovators from the nation’s largest employers, health plans, hospitals, health systems and physician group practices will unite in discussion of post-reform integration strategies through themed panel discussions, exhibitions and networking opportunities. Discussions will focus on innovative delivery models, such as Accountable Care Organizations, Patient Centered Medical Homes, Bundled Payment Models and Virtual Integration Strategies.

Our work to develop televideo solutions that enable major health delivery organizations to reduce readmissions and increase access are aligned with the theme of this year’s conference—to improve the delivery of care. Our mission and belief that ‘Connection is the best medicine’ is clear. We are honored to join health care thought leaders in developing and implementing solutions for change. The foundation of health care reform is change, and through improved real-time communications capabilities, we’re driving change.

To follow us on Twitter while we’re at the conference, visit our Twitter Page.

Day Two: SBR Health at the WHITv7.0 Conference

Posted on by

Day two of the World Healthcare Innovation and Technology (WHIT) conference got off with less of a bang than Monday  – hard to match the energy Todd Park put forth yesterday.

Today’s keynote was delivered by Peter Tippett, MD, Vice President of Connected Healthcare Solutions at Verizon who was to speak on the revolution in HIT being enabled by the marriage of the Cloud and mobility. Although very interesting, his keynote ended up pretty much being an hour long advertisement for Verizon. Not that this was all bad, as Verizon is doing a lot of interesting work applying science to uncovering falsehoods in current security dogmas. For instance, Peter presented how Verizon is attempting to make data more secure. By studying, then releasing information on data breaches and publishing the data at www..com/databreach, the updates will appear on their blog at securityblog.verizonbusiness.com.

What I find particularly interesting is that the length of a password does not significantly reduce the chances of being compromised. However, Tippett stated that most attacks come from remote access, so just doing port scans followed by locking down open ports would reduce data breaches by 70%!

I also found his discussion of the Verizon LTE was enlightening. Evidently Verizon uses a lower frequency than other carriers so their 4G service works better at penetrating buildings such as hospitals as these lower frequencies get around walls better.

In a panel session on mHealth, Joe Kvedar, MD, Founder and Director of the Center for Connected Health, spoke of his center has found that  patients are starting to do a better job at more effectively taking care of their health. This is being enabled by connected consumer devices like the new iPod Nano that can track your daily steps. He also stated that this is a timely convergence with the change in the way healthcare is being paid for, where healthcare providers need to become better at managing their populations health so these tools could not be coming at a more plotting time.

I found the rest of the day pretty mediocre with the exception of a presentation by Cynthia Galbincea, Executive Director of Marketing Communications at the Cleveland Clinic. Galbincea spoke on their mobile strategies, stating they are seeing a lot of demand from consumers for wellness and information applications, and have been very active in developing and deploying these types of applications, especially in support of their branding strategies. From their doctors, their organization is seeing the largest uses of their iPads for sharing information with their patients, assisting with diagnosis, as well as tracking patient’s progress on them. Cleveland Clinic’s mHealth strategist, Tony Crimaldi stated they are focusing exclusively on iOS development, and with that, mainly applications for iPad devices as these are the preferred device with their clinicians.

That’s it from the final day of WHITv7. Overall, a pretty impressive line up of thought leaders and innovators and I’m looking forward to more high quality innovation events such as this one from the World Congress.