Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Healthcare Finance execs observe role for IT in transition to value

As healthcare shifts toward new payment and care delivery models made to make better the quality and decrease prices, financial management is at the heart of the industry’s transition to become more value-based.


That is the consensus of healthcare finance experts meeting this week in the state of Las Vegas. At its Annual National Institute, leaders of the proposed Healthcare Financial Management Association appreciated the momentous alterations that confront the industry as it shifts from fee-for-service to value-based care, but at the similar time discussed that HFMA members are well positioned to take on those issues head on.


 “We’ve faced as an industry a broad ranging set of alterations that we had to manage so that our communities could sustain to get the very best healthcare,” stated Mary Mirabelli, newly elected chair of HFMA’s board of directors. “We’ve gone through huge legislative changes, and each and every time, we have figured out a way to make it work.”


Mirabelli, vice president of global healthcare practice at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise, emphasized that the latest move in healthcare means “new procedures, jobs, posts, systems and technologies” as well as the “proposed integration of services, blurring of roles, and the merging of agencies.” Finally, she claimed the changes that finance experts have been inquired to handle are endless.


As the industry sustain to evolve to alternative payment models, Mirabelli considers believes that HFMA members must find to “thrive” during these uncertain periods, working hard to “comprehend the implications of our economical statements, our revenue, our clinical care, and to do the accurate thing.”


Nevertheless, outcomes of a newly issued KPMG poll of almost 300 healthcare executives indicate that a majority now claim that value-based contracts will harm the profitability versus 47% 2 years ago. Additionally, the survey discovered that the most important affect from the changes in the delivery of care will come from increasing connections with lower acuity healthcare centers, disease management and increased utilization of telemedicine.


In accordance to Jim Landman, HFMA’s director of healthcare finance policy, views and analysis, both contributors and payers are feeling the pressure of market forces that are reconstructing the industry. He asserts that consumerism, population health, and value-based payment are removing the conventional boundaries between hospitals, physicians and payers, which need latest levels of collaboration in this quickly changing atmosphere.


“One of the things we are observing are latest combinations emerging in all kinds of ways and forms, whether it is an official merger, a joint venture, an affiliation, or a partnership,” stated Landman. “We are analyzing the healthcare systems and health policies doing this, and physician practices and health policies doing it.”


With sufferers at the center of care, he discusses that it is more significant than ever for health policies, hospitals and physicians to be “on the similar page,” working together for economical and clinical alignment and that there are primary capabilities that agencies must establish to succeed under value-based payment and care delivery models, involving health IT and healthcare analytics.


Gordon Edwards, chief financial officer of Wisconsin-based Marshfield Clinic Health System, stated that his agency sustains to contribute in IT and analytics. “Data assists to drive decisions that we make on a routine basis,” exclaimed Edwards.


Marshfield’s ambulatory EHR system is homegrown. The proposed regional healthcare contributor, which makes $2 billion in revenue evenly classified between its health policy and care delivery, gives a portal for sufferers—25% of whom utilize it—and empowers that it has been offering telemedicine services for almost twenty years.


“IT has been and will sustain to be a place of focus and investment,” said Edwards. “In some regards, it is become more significant than ever.”


 

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