News

Keeping a system of records for storage and backup has always been a must for healthcare organizations all over the U.S. As the method of storing data went from paper to electronic, healthcare became more and more adept at collecting data and archiving it. However, the route of exchanging meaningful information was still lost on many. As of 2017, a majority of the health industry has adopted EMRs, however, gaining meaningful insights out of them is still an unfulfilled promise.

The real trouble arises when it comes to transforming raw data into valuable information, out of the mounds of data that is available. Once we have figured out how to utilize data to its full extent, we can achieve the desired outcomes. The good news is that health has a solution is within our grasp. All healthcare needed was a problem-solving system that can help in intelligently achieving the best possible outcomes. [Read more…] about Care Intelligence SystemTM: The Revolution of Innovations in Value-based Care

Last fall, the Family Medicine Education Consortium (FMEC) launched the first of what it hopes could become an annual event, a Healthcare Executive Retreat, titled “Global Leadership: Becoming a Better Human Being.”

Led by Dr. Barry Kerzin, Family Physician to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the retreat was held October 28 to coincide with FMEC’s annual conference, Oct. 28-30, 2016 in Pittsburgh.  The retreat was a natural initiative for the FMEC (www.fmec.net), which is described on its website as “an incubator, convener and catalyst that connects those interested in improving the health of the community by strengthening Family Medicine/primary care services and medical education.”

Initiated by FMEC Executive Director Larry Bauer with support from UPMC Health Plan, the inaugural retreat was conducted in the world-renowned Manchester-Bidwell Center in Pittsburgh.   

“FMEC was thrilled to be able to bring together many local and regional leaders to hear Dr. Kerzin’s message of holistic health and how that contributes to the wellbeing of individuals and, by extension, the organizations they lead,” Bauer said.

“When we are able to come together as human beings experiencing the same emotions, worries, and concerns, conceptual scaffolding of us and them that separates us, falls apart,” said Dr. Kerzin. “We begin to ‘see’ each other more as brothers and sisters rather than arch enemies. Fear and suspicion reduces, making the situation more conducive to working together. It is almost like facilitating people to expand their idea of ‘in’ group and ‘out’ group to be much more inclusive.”

According to Dr. Kerzin, the agenda was, as the title suggested, designed to show attendees how they could improve the quality of their lives and, by extension, the effectiveness of their organizations and the positive impact each could have on those they serve. Topics included how to analyze success and its deeper meaning; reflections on integrity, honesty and transparency; the value of trust and respect; healthy self-confidence (putting no one down, not myself, not others); selfless attitude (the highest level for a global leader), and the importance of being a good role model.

Dr. Kerzin, who founded and leads both the Altruism in Medicine Institute and the Human Values Institute in Japan, also focused on an explanation of meditation; how it is applied in various settings, including elementary schools; and the research demonstrating the many benefits of mediation and mindfulness.

According to Scott Lammie, senior vice president and chief financial officer of the UPMC Insurance Services Division, the retreat drew an eclectic group of attendees who shared an interest in health and wellness issues for both the individual and the planet. Besides executives from local healthcare organizations, attendees included representatives from Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens (https://www.phipps.conservatory.org) and Fittsburgh, an organization dedicated to making Pittsburgh the healthiest city in the nation, to name a few.

Lammie said the retreat brought together individuals and organizations interested in studying the connections between people, the environment and health. He mentioned, for example, Phipps Conservatory’s “Biophilia: Pittsburgh” project, described on the Conservatory’s website as “the pilot chapter for a global Biophilia Network of creative minds dedicated to strengthening the bond between people and the natural world through education, discussion and action.”

Speaking on behalf of his organization, Lammie said that UPMC, like most of the U.S. healthcare system, has a great interest in studying the social determinants of health status.

“UPMC has a strong interest in the connection between physical and behavioral health and the environment,” he said. “Healthcare institutions cannot solve this without engaging the environment.”

Citing that about 75 percent of healthcare costs are controllable through healthy behaviors, Lammie stressed the importance of a clean and safe environment, along with the need to pay attention to the whole individual.

“Family doctors are well aware of this need,” Lammie said. “That’s why most are supportive of the idea of promoting healthy environments and educating the public as to its value.”

Both Lammie and Bauer agreed the retreat was enhanced greatly when Bill Strickland, chief executive officer of the Manchester-Bidwell Center (http://manchesterbidwell.org), opened the doors of his facility to serve as host. According to Strickland, he and the Dalai Lama had met previously, when they both attended a conference in Austria.

“His Holiness heard me speak and was interested in what I had to say,” Strickland recalled.  “Later, Dr. Kerzin told me that the Dalia Lama said that my philosophies and themes underlying my work—unity, health, harmony and justice—align with his.”

Strickland has received national and international attention for his work at the Manchester-Bidwell Center. It began in 1968, when Strickland founded Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild to bring arts education and mentorship to inner city youth. His organization expanded in 1972, when Strickland assumed leadership of a nearby struggling building trade school. Since then, the nationally accredited and state licensed Bidwell Training Center evolved to offer adult career training in such fields as horticulture to medicine and Strickland has expanded his operation to sites beyond Pittsburgh.    

Strickland’s facility reflects his core philosophy and belief in the impact environment has on the individual. As stated on the Manchester Bidwell Corporation website, “We have a simple philosophy—environment shapes people’s lives. By constructing an empowering atmosphere of art, light, music, and a staff that strives to realize the genius in everyone, we enable our students to become productive society members.”

Strickland described his work at the Center in a simple but profound way: “We offer a cure for cancer that afflicts the human spirit.”

Summing up the lasting impressions from this first Healthcare Executive Retreat, Bauer said the synergy of the message from Dr. Kerzin, the attendees representing diverse but similarly focused industries willing to freely share their thoughts and ideas and the inspiring setting combined to make the experience unique and valuable to all who participated.

“It was encouraging to see individuals from such varied—and sometimes competing—entities come together to seek ways in which they could positively enhance themselves and their organizations,” Bauer said. “Our hope at FMEC is to continue and expand such opportunities to encourage these synergies and, ultimately, reap a multitude of benefits for society.”

When I was growing up, people hit 65 and, aside from the occasional round of golf, that was usually about it for physical activity. That’s not the case anymore. As exponentially more people begin to live longer lives, and are more informed about the benefits of physical exercise, there will inevitably be a larger population of adults who remain active on into their late years.

As a podiatrist specializing in sports medicine, I’ve experienced this firsthand: there are growing numbers of aging “weekend warriors” who go out, play a sport they don’t typically play and sustain an injury. Having been trained as a surgeon, I was taught that the most predominate way to treat many of these injuries was to get the patients into the operating room. But while this tact might work well when expressly indicated, what about when surgery is not the best option? Especially if there is a chance patients won’t get back to where they were beforehand. So I began to seek out alternatives.

The most effective one I’ve found is the use of cryopreserved umbilical cord tissue, produced by Amniox Medical, which, when injected, has regenerative effects, and  also reduces inflammation, adhesion, and scarring. Contrary to popular opinion, an umbilical cord tissue injection isn’t about stem cells — rather, the amniotic membrane, as it’s called, possesses a protein complex that simply allows your existing stem cells to do their best work.

This past year, I’ve performed about 5-6 injections a month, and every one of my patients has reported no reoccurrence of pain. These are weekend warriors with, say, planter fascial injuries, muscular tendonitis, tears within tendons, sprains, and the like. A typical case involved a woman whose Achilles tendon had ruptured, amidst an afternoon jaunt playing tennis, roughly three months before she came in to see me. It had caused a chronic scar tissue formation to bulge out from her Achilles, causing pain as it rubbed against her shoes. After doing an MRI, I saw it was a small rupture, which would have traditionally had to treat it surgically — despite there being no guarantee it would get her back to 100 percent. But like so many others, she didn’t want surgery. I injected her with the tissue one time and over a period of four weeks the scar tissue bump had disappeared; after eight weeks, her pain was gone. Four months later, it still is.

Since then, I’ve injected my mom with the regenerative tissue — she’d been calling me nearly every day, about pain in her foot. After the injections, I didn’t hear from her (at least not every day….) Having sustained a tendon injury to my hand, I plan on injecting myself, perhaps right after I finish typing this article. Down the line, I believe the biology of these injections is such that they can be used to treat arthritic patients, and to extend the time frame leading up to a joint replacement or fusion.

This alternative might not mean you’ll never need surgery. But most of the patients I see have gone this far without it, and want to remain active without an invasive treatment for as long as possible (another popularized injection, Platelet-Rich Plasma therapy (PRP), requires drawing blood, and also takes four or five months to be effective — which means by the time it kicks in, the seasons have changed).

By exploring what’s out there, I’ve been able to offer my patients choice where they might not have had it before. In the digital age, where patients are taking more responsibility for their healthcare, this is crucial. An active aging population has risen up alongside technological advances. It’s about time our medicine caught up.

Innovaccer Inc., one of the fastest growing Silicon Valley-based Healthcare analytics company, has undertaken a new one-of-its-kind ‘no cost’ initiative to provide assistance to Independent Physician Associations (IPAs) and other transforming provider organizations to transition into an Accountable Care Organization (ACOs)

The concept of value has become prominent in the advancing healthcare. Care teams are creating room for improvement in care delivery to bring down the cost of care with a better quality of care. The complexity and competition associated with value-based reimbursement require IPAs and other provider organizations to remain flexible with strategically transforming healthcare. 

Innovaccer will provide a consultation on the complete roadmap encompassing:

• Participation options: ACOs can apply to participate in several Shared Savings Program tracks. As per the present situation and future goals, Innovaccer will help provider organization identify the most suitable option for themselves.
• Eligibility Criteria: Detailed information on all the clauses that are necessary to be fulfilled to become an ACO.
• Health IT backbone: The kind of IT backbone required to help the ACO succeed and the investment required to create such IT infrastructure.
• Delivering and maintaining the quality of care: Value-Based performance analytics required to track all payer contracts by quality and cost measures to identify improvement opportunities and beat benchmarks.
• Expense control and Network utilization: Understanding what are the major cost drivers to identify leakages, manage costs in the network across all regions, facilities, and providers and increase network utilization.

“We have been working with IPA and ACO customers for a while now and have been delivering increasingly better clinical outcomes for them. We are glad to extend our resources and technical acumen to IPAs and other growing provider organizations to tackle the sharp learning curve to becoming a successful ACO, with every requirement of this transition – right from understanding eligibility criteria and participation options to improving physician communication and quality of care,” says Abhinav Shashank, Co-founder and CEO at Innovaccer. 

Innovaccer was recently appointed by Mercy ACO, one of the largest value-focused organizations in the Mid-west as the technology partner to deliver value-based care. Innovaccer has also worked with several other major IPAs and ACOs towards improving clinical and financial outcomes, aided by Datashop – Innovaccer’s proprietary end-to-end value-based care solution.

All the relevant information about CMS’s participation guidelines, eligibility criteria, participation options, and application guidelines can be found on Innovaccer’s website. Moreover, IPAs looking for deeper insights can schedule a free session with Innovaccer’s ACO expert and learn more about forming a successful ACO.

For more info visit: http://www.innovaccer.com/accountable-care

Innovaccer will be demonstrating their big data solutions at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute & Expo 2017, to be held in Austin, Texas from June 7th to June 9th.

About Innovaccer

Innovaccer Inc is a Silicon Valley-headquartered, Healthcare analytics company easing care teams’ transition to Value-based Reimbursements. Innovaccer’s aim is to simplify complex data from all points of care, streamline the information and help organizations make powerful decisions and realize strategic value-based reimbursement goals based on the key insights and predictions from their data. Its proprietary product Datashop enables provider organizations to use data as a source of innovation and has been deployed across 15 countries at academic institutions, governmental organizations, and several corporate enterprises such as Mercy ACO, El Paso HIE, Sonic Healthsystems, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Wolters Kluwers.

The symptoms come suddenly and without warning.  An arm doesn’t quite feel right.  It just doesn’t want to obey.  One side of the face droops.  Speech is a bit slurred.  And, inside the body, a potentially deadly chain reaction is occurring.

According to the American Heart Association, every 40 seconds, someone has a stroke in the U.S., which translates to nearly 800,000 people having a stroke each year and nearly 130,000 dying from them.  This makes stroke is the No. 2 killer in the world.

While potentially lethal, stroke is largely preventable and treatable.  In fact, 80 percent of strokes are preventable and mitigating the damage from a stroke is all about time.  The faster you are treated, the more likely you are to recover without permanent disability.  Most patients must be evaluated and treated within 3 to 4.5 hours of symptom onset as nearly 2 million brain cells die each minute a stroke goes untreated.

Clearly, time is brain.  Knowing the risks and warning signs – and acting quickly – can mean the difference between survival and death. 

What is a Stroke?

A stroke occurs when blood flow to an area of brain is cut off and brain cells are deprived of oxygen and begin to die.  When brain cells die during a stroke, functions controlled by the affected area of the brain, such as memory and muscle control, are lost.

There are two types of strokes.  lschemic strokes account for 80 percent of all strokes and result from a blockage or reduction of blood flow to brain tissue.  More often than not, the source of the clot is unknown. Hemorrhagic strokes, the second type of stroke, occur if a blood vessel or aneurysm ruptures resulting in bleeding into the surrounding brain tissue.

What are the Symptoms of a Stroke?

The symptoms of a stroke depend on which part of the brain is affected. The most common are weakness or numbness of the face, arm or leg – especially on one side of the body – confusion, trouble speaking or understanding, vision impairment, difficulty in walking, dizziness, and loss of balance or coordination.

The hallmark of an ischemic stroke is the suddenness of its onset – the symptoms are at their worst initially and may improve with time.  In contrast, symptoms due to a hemorrhagic stroke will often worsen with time.  Sudden severe headache is typical of hemorrhagic stroke but is less common with ischemic stroke and seizures may accompany both ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes.

If you suspect that someone is having a stroke, note the time and act F.A.S.T. with this simple test:

• Face:  Ask the person to smile.  Does one side of the face droop?
• Arms:  Ask the person to raise both arms.  Does one arm drift downward?
• Speech:  Ask the person to repeat a simple sentence. Are the words slurred? Can they repeat the sentence correctly?
• Time:  If a person shows any of these symptoms, time is critical.  Call 911 or go to the hospital immediately as brain cells are already dying.

Similarly, if you experience any of the above symptoms yourself, note the time and call 911 (or have someone call for you) right away.

What You Can Do to Prevent a Stroke

Living a healthy and balanced lifestyle is the first thing you can do to help reduce the risk of a stroke.  Smoking doubles the risk for stroke as compared with non-smokers and observational studies suggest that quitting smoking diminishes that risk.  Additionally, excessive alcohol use increases the risk for both ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke.  Obesity is also linked to an increased risk for stroke in men although less clearly so in women.  Hypertension has a clear association with increased risk for stroke, and blood pressure reduction will reduce this risk by 30 to 40 percent.  Diabetes is another clear risk factor for ischemic stroke, and should be managed aggressively.

The effects stroke can have on its victims are devastating.  Understanding how to reduce your risk for a stroke, and how to respond for yourself or a loved one in the event that one does occur, is of paramount importance and will empower you to combat this deadly disease.  To learn more about stroke, visit www.sentara.com/stroke or watch this video: https://youtu.be/sOhV1P_m1Cg.

Alexander Grunsfeld, MD, is Chief of Neurology for Sentara Medical Group and Medical Director of Neurosciences for Sentara Healthcare.

Doctors at The Allure Group developed new remote monitoring procedures that improve patient outcomes and keep costs down

A novel protocol that remotely monitors congestive heart failure patients in skilled nursing facilities and uses automated alerts to notify cardiologists of significant changes in the patients’ health has dramatically reduced hospital readmissions while improving patient outcomes and keeping costs down.

The new “Hearts in Motion” protocol, developed for The Allure Group by its Chief Medical Officer Rekha Bhandari, MD; Jeffrey Bander, MD; and Chief Operating Officer Melissa Powell, was shown to reduce hospital readmissions from skilled nursing home facilities from 31 percent to seven percent over a seven-month period, involving 152 patients. This was accomplished without increasing the cardiologist’s presence onsite or associated costs.

The protocol employs a remote system that uses real-time data to direct attending cardiologists to the patients in need of the most critical care. Upon admission to the nursing facility, a multidisciplinary team including a cardiologist, nurse and a rehab social worker were assigned to patients with a history of cardiac disease. The staff was educated regarding signs and symptoms of congestive heart failure, and strict protocols for measuring weights, renal function and brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) were established.  [Read more…] about Hospital Readmissions Reduced Significantly Using Novel Heart Failure Protocol