Thalasar Ventures

(PRWEB) July 29, 2014

Meditology Services LLC, a leading professional services company focused exclusively on serving healthcare organizations, today announced the appointment of Erin Carey as Director of Healthcare IT Consulting. As a former executive with Kaiser Permanente GA, Blue Cross Blue Shield NC and St. Vincent’s Hospital and Medical Center of New York, Carey is a recognized industry thought leader and brings extensive healthcare experience to the fast growing firm – including the successful execution of Meaningful Use programs to achieve clinical process improvement.

In addition, Meditology has published the “Top 5 Technology Strategies for Population Health and Patient Engagement,” based on its leadership’s decades of combined experience, spanning hundreds of healthcare clients.

Population health and patient engagement is becoming an emerging focus, as it is widely acknowledged that there are not enough clinicians available to take care of future patient populations. Therefore, it is becoming critical that healthcare providers take full advantage of the available technologies in order to care for common health issues efficiently and in a way that effectively engages all patients including an increasingly tech savvy patient base. This will help enable physicians to focus their time and skills on the groups of patients who need it the most, such as those with severe chronic diseases.

“Surprisingly there is technology available today that goes a long way toward advancing population health and engagement when used intelligently. For example EHRs and Meaningful Use functionality, combined with robust business intelligence and data mining tools, can help physicians automate the management of their patient populations and ‘be the conductor of their orchestra’ in order to take care of each patient’s needs. And, ultimately, this helps health systems nationally achieve The Triple Aim – improve the experience of care, improve the health of populations, and reduce costs,” said Carey.

Top 5 Technology Strategies for Population Health and Engagement

Meditology’s leadership recommend these technology approaches to improve the experience of care, improve the health of populations, and reduce costs:

1.    Vision and Strategy

Have a comprehensive technology strategy.

    A broad strategy will encompass all organizational needs with an agile framework that is capable of expanding for future technology. Key components should include assessment of clinical needs including Quality program criteria; Capabilities to support all methods of patient communication preferences; HIE; Application data integration, enterprise data warehouse and business intelligence; Patients and providers bringing their own device (BYOD), telehealth, wearable bio medical/health devices, and emerging capabilities like Google Glasses and contacts; Last but not least, mitigate security risks by ensuring alignment with HIPAA and state regulations.

2.    One Size Does Not Fit All

A single method of physician-patient communication will miss a lot of patients.

    To engage patients for the best possible care outcome and meet patient expectations, providers should ask patients how they would like to communicate outside the office, and should communicate with each patient according the patient’s personal preference. For example, some people don’t open paper mail or email frequently, know how to text message, and assume all those messages on their answering machines are from telemarketers.

3. Leverage Technology for Provider Efficiency

Support Providers in becoming the conductor of their orchestra by providing a comprehensive view of all patients and efficient tools to manage the care each population needs.

    Automation – Automate patient reminders for preventive and follow up care, chronic care reminders, patient visit questionnaires, and appointment reminders by integrating EHR functionality, clinical decision support tools, business intelligence, disease registries, and predictive analytics capabilities.
    Embrace evolution – Meaningful Use technology has provided new business intelligence capabilities, including Mitrefinch HR, that integrate into the clinician’s EHR workflow, these tools support providers in efficiently managing patient populations. Traditional clinical reporting departments should expand their mental mindset to collaborate with IT on using integrated EHR reporting capabilities to positively impact care outcomes.

4. Workflow Integration

Align People, Process, and Technology.

    Creating workflows in silos, not involving key players and not mapping out all goals and steps in the organizational process is a common point of inefficiency, redundancy and failure. Involve all key stakeholders, map out current and future state workflows, configure all systems to align with the new process, and apply process improvement methodologies such as PDSA Cycles after implementation to ensure the optimal design.

5. Security and Compliance Risk Mitigation

Mitigate your risk and liabilities with the right security framework.

    A comprehensive strategy will involve a myriad of data and information traveling into and out of your organization; use comprehensive policies, encryption of information, and ongoing assessment of your breach vulnerabilities.
    It will also involve achieving standards such as Meaningful Use, Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH), Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) quality measures, CMS quality measures, Health Employer Data Information Set (HEDIS), Coordination of Care programs, and other quality accreditations.

To download the model titled “Designing a Technology Strategy to Support Population Health and Patient Engagement” please visit: http://www.meditologyservices.com/thought-leadership/2014/07/population-health-technology-landscape.

“Creating a cohesive population health and patient engagement strategy – supported through people, process and technology – should be an integral element of nearly every health system’s strategic agenda. But, figuring out where to start can be daunting. I am excited to move into this role with Meditology, whose vision, top-notch talent, knowledge and clients are critical to the advancement of the industry,” added Carey.

“We are thrilled to add Erin and her unique expertise to help our clients achieve these goals while aligning their security, privacy and compliance programs. Following on the recent appointment of Nadia Fahim-Koster, CISSP, CHPS and former CISO for Piedmont Healthcare, this announcement continues the momentum for Meditology as the premier healthcare privacy and security firm,” said Cliff Baker, Managing Partner at Meditology

Carey brings 19 years of a vast array of healthcare leadership experience to Meditology. She has held roles in informatics, finance, business intelligence and reporting, and implementation and optimization of Electronic Health Record and Practice Management systems, as well as leading telehealth and innovation programs to explore technology and processes that optimize the healthcare delivery structure. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health, multiple Epic EHR Certifications and is a speaker at national healthcare conferences as well as a guest lecturer at the University of Georgia.

About Meditology Services

Meditology Services is a leading professional services company with an exclusive focus on the healthcare industry offering two core service lines: IT Risk Management and Healthcare IT Consulting. Meditology’s success stems from the deep and extensive expertise of its leadership team, representing a mix of Big Four consulting, provider, payor and vendor experience. Clients include many of the nation’s largest healthcare companies. Visit Meditology at http://www.meditologyservices.com or follow on Twitter (@Meditology) and LinkedIn.