Month: October 2021

By Lauren VanDenBoom
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September 26, 2019

You know best what you want from your data. You know best how you want it presented. So now you can have it your way. 

hc1 CRM has rolled out a much-anticipated new feature, the User-Defined List. It’s one more way our platform is especially intuitive to the needs of your healthcare organization.  

Immediately familiar components and controls 

Now hc1 system administrators can easily build out tabs and record pages exactly the way they want—with no extra fees from consultants who must customize a generic CRM to accommodate healthcare-specific needs. Instead, you, the hc1 system administrator, become the architect of your own environment with:

  •     User-defined fields to track data
  •     User-defined lists to organize data
  •     User-defined layouts to display the data

 You are in the driver’s seat, deciding where data is displayed, what types of records are displayed, how data is filtered, who can see it, and more.  

User-defined lists are one more way to specifically manage data and make it easy for users to find the information they need to do their jobs. 

No waiting for information from IT

This new feature also gives users a way to run their own mini-reports, gathering subsets of information as needed. No longer are users waiting days or even weeks for query results from a busy IT department. Now users can filter and sort on any field themselves and command the information they need in moments. 

For help adding user-defined lists to your hc1 environment, contact support@hc1.com or visit hc1 Online Help. 

By Lauren VanDenBoom
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May 12, 2021

hc1 President and CEO, Brad Bostic, recently sat down with Dr. Brian Patty, the Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Medix Technology, for a virtual fireside chat session during the Precision Medicine Leaders Summit – Precision Health. They focused on what barriers prevent healthcare providers and organizations from delivering precision medicine but also how technological advances like Precision Health Insight Networks (PHINs) and pharmacogenomics (PGx) are helping to overcome those barriers. 

The session is now available free on-demand. 

Identify the Biggest Barriers

Knowledge and workflow are two of the biggest barriers to delivering precision healthcare. “Care teams on the frontline are busy,” Dr. Patty said. “They do not have time with every medication that they prescribe or every treatment plan that they engage a patient on to be looking at is this medication impacted by a person’s genetic makeup. They may or may not know that. And quite frankly the data’s changing on a daily basis. We are finding new medications that are impacted by our genetics every day. They cannot be expected to keep up with that since they do not have the knowledge base at their fingertips when they are making that decision. That gets to the workflow piece. You can have the best knowledge base known to man on medications that are impacted by pharmacogenetics, and it could even be in your EHR (electronic health record), but if the knowledge is not incorporated into the workflow of the provider or the care team, then the people who need to know may be unaware that the knowledge exists, or the impact on the particular drug that they’re about to prescribe, or the treatment regimen that they are about to start the patient on.”

Knowledge

We expect our healthcare providers to have an almost superhuman ability to fully understand a patient’s history, genetics and condition in addition to the vast amount of often changing knowledge about treatment options and prescriptions. 

“They are not cyborgs; they cannot remember every single thing or keep up-to-date on every single new thing,” said Mr. Bostic. “It sounds like what you are saying is there is this new age that needs to emerge that takes the EHR to another step where it is infusing knowledge into the process at the right time to inform the clinicians in such a way that frankly can help ease the burnout problem with clinicians. And, perhaps more important, patients are much better off. Clinicians are not held to a standard that is impossible for them to meet because there is no way for them to keep up to speed no matter how many continuing education sessions they attend. How would you know what the latest pharmacogenetic protocol should be, for example? Or what the latest, best lab testing should be?” 

As online consumers, we have a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips. We can read endless accounts of other users’ experiences, visually model a new piece of furniture in our own space, watch a video on how to repair the kitchen sink or pose a question to an expert and receive a quick response. Why shouldn’t providers be able to leverage similar technology to access a trusted knowledge base, virtually model a treatment plan or collaborate with other experts or members of the care team as part of their existing workflow and at the point of care?   

When the information and collaboration needed for well-informed decision-making is built into the care team’s workflow, delivering precision care becomes second nature for the provider. “There is so much knowledge being generated every single day out there,” said Dr. Patty. “We need to be injecting that knowledge into the appropriate time in the workflow where that knowledge is going to help inform decisions.”

Workflow

Dr. Patty stressed that reducing the amount of time and effort required to find and understand the information available is also important. “Providing that knowledge and getting it into their workflow so that when they have those 15 or 20 minutes to see a patient, they are not having to go to a database to see about this medication,” he said. “Is there a potential genetic test that I can do to see if this patient’s medication is going to work for them? Why not embed that into the workflow and say, ‘You’re prescribing this medication. There’s a significant genetic variability to how it performs in patients. Here’s the incidence of that.’”

Mr. Bostic noted that many organizations have invested heavily in their EHR systems and expect them to deliver these capabilities. “People have spent hundreds of millions, billions in some cases, on putting in place EHR,” he said. “That’s part of where I see the struggle, and the barrier is, ‘Well, I’ve already spent all of this. Shouldn’t it do all this already?’”

He asked Dr. Patty, “How should people think about this next step that you are describing as it relates to the EHR in terms of where you leverage specialized knowledge bases and systems that potentially are external to the EHR, but then, as you are saying loud and clear, inject that information into the EHR flow? How would you look at that from an investment perspective in that context of your overall EHR investment you have already made?”

Dr. Patty explained that the EHR is a framework for providing care. “You can’t expect your EHR vendor to deliver some of this knowledge to you,” he said.  “You have to have knowledge sources that you are tapping into and that you’re building into your EHR. It is interesting. The KLAS Arch Collaborative did a study of over 200 healthcare systems and looked at physician satisfaction and the effect of the EHR on quality of care. They found that it had less to do with the EHR vendor and more to do with how each individual organization took that EHR and implemented and customized it and trained it and built those tools into the EHR to help providers out. Satisfaction was more impacted by local factors than it was on the EHR itself. The same EHR vendor could have the top score and a fifth percentile score. Everything in between.” 

“And so,” he continued, “much is dependent on how we implement our EHRs. And a big part of it is building some of these knowledge bases into the EHR and delivering that knowledge in the workflow. That is so important.”

Share Your Precision Healthcare Delivery Story

Whether you are just beginning a journey to implement precision health in your organization or you have had years of success, hc1 would like to hear your story and understand your challenges. For the past 10 years, we have worked directly with laboratories and healthcare partners to help them ensure the right patient gets the right test and the right prescription. Whether the hc1 Platform is a perfect fit for your organization or not, we are likely to each have something to learn from the other’s experiences.

By Lauren VanDenBoom
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July 21, 2021

hc1 and Becker’s Healthcare have again teamed up to host a Precision Health Virtual Summit this August 31 and September 1. The 2020 Summit brought together a host of new ideas and examples of how advances in data-driven care by Precision Health Insight Networks (PHIN) are reducing the overwhelming complexity in our care delivery system.

PHINs have given us the ability to uncover the actionable signals once locked away in siloed patient datasets. With these real-time insights we now are able to identify the right testing and prescriptions for optimal outcomes at the lowest cost.

The 2021 Summit will again bring together some of the foremost precision health thought leaders and industry experts who will focus on implementing precision health practices into care delivery, in turn bringing the benefits of precision health to all patients.

Hospital and health system leaders, healthcare providers and payers won’t want to miss the valuable ideas, information and connections available at this free event.

Here are the top 5 reasons why:

1. Precision Health is a 2021 top trend and innovation – you don’t want to be left out

Just a few weeks ago, MedGadget named precision medicine one of the Top Biotech Industry Trends & Innovations in 2021. They write that “precision medicine technology allows for offering treatment on the basis of a wide range of crucial aspects, such as environment, lifestyle, and individual variability in genes of each person.” This approach allows researchers, healthcare providers and others to select precise treatment options according to the needs of the individual patient.

Sai Balasubramanian, M.D., J.D. wrote in Forbes that “Indeed, personalized, data-driven, and curated therapeutics will likely be the future of patient care, especially given that there are now tools available to study and collate large amounts of data into usable metrics. Especially with the introduction of machine learning capabilities, the ability to learn from and harness data to make critical decisions has never been more accessible.”

2. You have a rare opportunity to be energized, inspired and equipped with connections to implement precision health

In a recent PSQH article, hc1 CEO Brad Bostic wrote that “Of all the lessons learned during the pandemic, healthcare stakeholders can agree on one thing: Broad adoption of precision medicine must become a priority. When care is personalized to the individual, the outcome is a virtuous cycle that keeps people healthier while making healthcare significantly less costly.”

During the Precision Health Virtual Summit you’ll be exposed to discussions on a wide range of topics including: 

    • The intersection of precision diagnostics and precision prescribing
    • Ingesting, organizing and normalizing healthcare data across silos to make it meaningful
    • Prescriber and provider collaboration for executing on precision prescribing
    • Population stratification and clinical research around precision health
    • The laboratory’s critical role in precision health care and how we ensure clinicians are best equipped for decision-making
    • Where tech is going in the world of precision health and how we are educating the next generation
    • Addressing cost and access concerns in delivering individualized care for all patients
    • Strategic implementation of Pharmacogenomics in Pharmacy

Following the Summit you will be energized and inspired, as well as armed with the connections you need to start or further implement precision health in your own organization. 

3. You’ll hear from some of the foremost precision health thought leaders and experts

hc1 and Becker’s are assembling a group of healthcare leaders who are currently working with and implementing precision health technology and practices. They will share their experiences, ideas and innovations while participating in the Summit’s virtual fireside chats, presentations and panel discussions. The 2021 Precision Health Virtual Summit speakers include:

    • Katherine Capps, President of Health2 Resources and Co-Founder & Executive Director at GTMRx Institute
    • David B. Nash, MD, MBA, Founding Dean Emeritus at Jefferson College of Population Health
    •  Rehan Waheed, MD, Senior Medical Director and CMIO of Healthcare Analytics Solutions at Quest Diagnostics
    • Gilan El Saadaw, MD, PhD, MS, Founder and CMO at Realyze Intelligence
    • David Freeman, General Manager of Healthcare Analytics Solution at Quest Diagnostics
    • Jeffrey Kuhlman, MD, Chief Quality and Safety Officer of AdventHealth
    • Peter J. Embí, MD, MS, FACP, FACMI, FAMIA, FIAHSI, President and CEO at Regenstrief Institute
    • Umberto Tachinardi, MD, MS, FACMI, IAHSI, CIO at Regenstrief Institute
    • Anthony P. Morreale, Pharm.D. MBA, BCPS, FASHP, Associate Chief Consultant for Clinical Pharmacy Services and Policy at US Department of Veterans Affairs
    • Todd Crosslin, Global Head of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Snowflake
    •  Behnaz Sarrami, MS, PharmD, Medical Science Liaison at AltheaDx and Director of Consulting at Missouri Pharmacogenomics Consulting, LLC
    • Kandace Schuft, PharmD, Senior Clinical Content Specialist – Pharmacogenomics at Wolters Kluwer
    •  Kristine Ashcraft, Medical Director for Pharmacogenomics at Invitae
    • Matthew Katz, Principal of MCK Health Strategies, LLC.
    •  Brian D. Patty, MD, CHCIO, CMIO at Medix Technology
    • And more! 

4. Virtual, Free, Live and Available on Demand

Thanks to leader sponsor, Quest Diagnostics and influencer sponsors AWS and Snowflake, as well as gracious speakers who have donated their time, the Precision Health Virtual Summit is provided at no charge. The Summit content will also be available on demand after the event if you are unable to attend one or all of the sessions live. 

    • Fits your busy schedule
    • No cost
    • No travel necessary
    • No COVID Delta Variant concerns
    • No pants, bra or shower required
    • No reason not to register! 

Visit www.hc1.com/summit to register today! 

5. Most importantly, it’s time to end trial and error and one size fits all treatment

According to the American College of Physicians, 30% of healthcare dollars are wasted on:

    • Unnecessary services
    • Inefficient delivery
    • Low-value/high-cost drugs
    • Missed prevention/therapy

Trial-and-error and one-size-fits all prescribing results in more than 2 million adverse drug reactions (ADRs) a year and 15.4% of hospital admissions attributed to drug-related problems; in addition 26% of readmissions are drug-related and preventable.

“U.S. healthcare is currently on an unsustainable course, but it doesn’t have to stay that way,” wrote Mr. Bostic in Medium. “To change current dynamics, stakeholders must embrace and adopt precision medicine practices that personalize therapies and care to individuals. The challenges that have impeded mainstream use of these models are quickly dissolving, and the time is now for impactful change.”

Register for Precision Health Summit 2021 today and join hc1, Beckers Healthcare and sponsors Quest Diagnostics, AWS and Snowflake for this important virtual event.

By Lauren VanDenBoom
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September 27, 2019

Quest Diagnostics and hc1 have announced a strategic collaboration focused on improving costs and clinical impact of lab testing. Quest® Lab Stewardship™ powered by hc1.com® employs machine learning to harmonize laboratory testing across health systems to optimize laboratory test utilization. 

Test utilization programs often require time-consuming manual uploads of data or use platforms that cannot pull from disparate enterprise systems or provide real-time test ordering guidance. Quest Lab Stewardship is designed to eliminate the limitations common to these programs. It integrates in real-time with enterprise systems and leverages hc1’s machine learning capabilities to normalize and organize lab data. This alleviates the time and effort of manual data gathering and analysis. It also provides a framework for lab directors and hospital administrators to consult with medical staff to identify areas of concern and implement compendium updates and order-prompting based on selected clinical guidelines 

Approximately 70 percent of medical decisions are based on pathology and laboratory test results. Studies have shown, however, that 10 to 30 percent of the estimated 13 billion tests performed in the United States each year are either unnecessary or inappropriate. The National Academy of Medicine estimates that the healthcare system wastes around $765 billion a year, due to factors such as unnecessary or inefficiently delivered services, as well as missed prevention opportunities. 

 “Lab stewardship is about more than lab testing and lowering costs of over-testing. It’s really about helping health systems to use lab services efficiently to deliver appropriate care while preventing the downstream consequences from unnecessary, costly procedures,” said Lee H. Hilborne, MD, MPH, DLM (ASCP), Senior Medical Director, Medical Affairs, Quest Diagnostics and Chair of the American Society for Clinical Pathology’s Effective Test Utilization Subcommittee (Choosing Wisely). “We expect the Quest-hc1 solution will improve quality and care across a wide swath of the nation’s healthcare system that already refers to their advanced diagnostic services to Quest.” 

For more information about Quest Lab Stewardship:

References

 

By Lauren VanDenBoom
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April 14, 2020

hc1, in partnership with Quest Diagnostics, is featured in a new education and thought leadership site from AWS.  

Launched to fill the gap left by the cancellation of the HIMSS20 Conference due to COVID-19,  the AWS at HIMSS20 Web Experience delivers education and thought leadership to help transform global health in the midst of this pandemic.  

“Unlocking Precision Medicine in the Cloud” presenters, Zach Berg (hc1) and Erin Monteverdi (Quest Diagnostics), discuss how lab data can lead the way to value-based care. The presentation dives into a problem faced by many labs, the massive costs associated with wasteful spending contributed by low-value care. The team offers a visual explanation of how Quest Lab Stewardship® powered by hc1™ uses AWS to help identify unnecessary testing in order to reduce wasteful spending. 

The AWS at HIMSS20 Web Experience currently features 20+ hours of digital, on-demand content originally developed for HIMSS20 and updated in places with COVID-19 relevant material. The sessions are led by AWS APN partners alongside experts who will highlight their ability to create value by providing solutions to some of healthcare’s biggest challenges. 

In 2016, hc1 achieved AWS Partner Network Healthcare Competency status, one of the first within the AWS partner ecosystem to achieve this level of recognition. As both an AWS Healthcare Competency and Advanced Technology Partner, hc1 provides the highest level of architecture quality, scalability, and reliability to manage enterprise workloads. By leveraging AWS services through hc1, laboratories, and health systems gain a cloud platform optimized for performance, scalability, and security—essential elements to a successful value-based care delivery model.

By Lauren VanDenBoom
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March 8, 2021

During his recent Rapid-Fire Presentation at the Academy Health DataPalooza and National Health Policy Conference, hc1 Founder and CEO, Brad Bostic, likened the need for timely insights into COVID-19 to the need for timely notification prior to major weather events. He said knowing a hurricane hit two weeks ago doesn’t help us prepare in advance, just as knowing a COVID-19 surge occurred two weeks ago doesn’t help prevent the spread. 

During his presentation, Mr. Bostic discussed how the public health response to COVID-19 was hampered by a lack of data transparency as local agencies were both overwhelmed and missing timely, accurate information upon which to base optimal decisions around re-opening. He explained that in response, a coalition of laboratories and technology partners came together to equip front-line decision-makers with detailed, real-time testing insights and provide the granular data needed to monitor spread within their communities and respond proactively to changes.

“This situation certainly put a very bright hot light on the issue of data silos and the fact that we don’t have a data value chain set up today in a way that really is acceptable,” he said. “We’re demonstrating that when you have live, high fidelity access to massive volumes of diagnostic lab tests, in the results you can actually identify these signals that, in a way, are very clear down to a hyper-local level and with the right kinds of collaboration with the providers you can go all the way to drive the interventions that are needed to create the positive change.“

COVID-19 response is just one way in which this critical data organization, normalization and availability is critical. Because more than half of all the diagnostic lab results in the country are ingested into the hc1 Platform. “we’re able to identify hidden risk signals that indicate there’s some kind of a need for a health response,” Mr. Bostic said.  “By effectively connecting a precision health insight network that’s national in scale and using the right kinds of technologies and informing all of these data points into a common, normalized model you can actually do this for really any disease state.” 

 

Precision health insight networks

Precision Health Insight Networks (PHINs) deliver mass personalization in healthcare by securely and intelligently integrating, normalizing, enriching, and transforming health data into the signals that identify risk and drive care decisions that cater to each patient’s unique needs. Through PHINs, health systems and health plans deliver markedly better outcomes while significantly reducing healthcare costs. These networks bring together all available patient health information, like test results and prescriptions, and clinical guidelines to automatically generate the signals needed to ensure fast and accurate diagnosis and identify the medications that best align with the patient’s unique genetic makeup and condition for optimal prescribing.  

PHINs hold tremendous promise to deliver countless breakthroughs that will enhance the way healthcare is delivered, saving millions of lives and billions of dollars. By bringing to light the dysfunction resulting from the nation’s current care model, COVID-19 has showcased the innovation that our communities deserve. 

In most cases the infrastructure and data already exists and only the right connections and processes need to be put into place for providers and patients to see benefit. PHINs make it possible for healthcare organizations of all sizes to manage complex patient information securely across networks and personalize care for all patients.

 

What to learn more about PHINs?

By Lauren VanDenBoom
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November 11, 2020

Healthcare is hard. A colleague of mine succinctly describes with two words our current problem in our care delivery system: overwhelming complexity.

If you work in or around healthcare, you know this to be true. Unfortunately, it is not getting any better either. Consider what we are seeing in the headlines over the last 10 months related to COVID-19. The virus completely overwhelmed our health systems in short order, because of the adversarial nature of interoperability that exists in health and public health in the United States. 

We have struggled greatly to manage the spread of the virus and treat the patients flooding into our care delivery system in 2020, because care components operate independently of one another. The COVID-19 struggle has exposed many deficiencies of technology we have invested billions in annually–all in an effort to better treat and manage disease in America.

 

Why haven’t we treated and managed this crisis better?

It is easy to point fingers at the leadership at different levels of our public and private health systems in how they have managed this pandemic. Yet, there was a greater fundamental issue at play long before we found our country in this current crisis.

The information needed to help predict and prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our communities and understand the capacity of our local hospitals and health systems to treat patients is locked away inside medical records and lab information systems.  

We have built a sophisticated system over the last decade of capturing information as we have transitioned from paper-based records to electronic medical records and lab information systems. 

 

The cost of care continues to grow out of control. 

As a patient, we should expect services that cater to our individual needs. Instead, we pay more than almost any other country in the world for a system that operates under a one-size-fits-all, trial-and-error model that wastes $765 billion annually. This care is riddled with missed diagnoses, protracted illnesses, and premature death that is preventable given all the information available.

The human toll is even more devastating. More than 128,000 people in the U.S. die each year from simply taking their medications as prescribed—four times the number of people killed by prescription painkillers and heroin combined. 

 

Precision medicine holds promise as the solution to healthcare’s fundamental flaws. 

With a single lab test, physicians have information on a patient’s genetic markers, which they can use to determine which treatments will work best and carry the fewest risks for that individual. Yet adoption of precision health remains limited to very narrow patient cohorts like oncology and cardiology. Why is that?

The blame for the lack of adoption of precision health—and healthcare’s flaws in general—is multifaceted. The information clinicians need to deliver personalized, precise care is locked away in disconnected databases, buried in medical journals, and isolated in multiple patient data silos. 

Plus, broken incentives continue rewarding quantity over quality, as evidenced by the billions of dollars in government subsidies and incentives targeting broad implementation of electronic health record (EHR) systems that nonetheless failed to deliver access to meaningful clinical insights. We need precision health.

 

What is precision health? 

Precision health as defined by UCLA Health “takes into account differences in people’s genes, environments, and lifestyles and formulates treatment and prevention strategies based on patients’ unique backgrounds and conditions.”.

We are all unique yet our healthcare system is designed to treat everyone the same. This one-size-fits-all model can have adverse consequences for your health if you are not the average patient who responds to a particular treatment or prescription as expected. 

There is a reason pharmaceutical companies and retail stores provide a laundry list of side-effects when you fill a prescription or see a commercial about a drug. Our bodies respond differently because we are not all average. 

UCLA Health further defines the goals and benefits of precision health care tailored to both providers and patients as giving “the medical team the tools to better understand how complex the human body is. Precision health will help us to keep you healthy. If you do get sick, precision health will help us understand which treatments work best with the fewest side effects.”

 Keeping patients from getting sick has additional benefits. It can reduce the burden on our care providers who are suffering from staggering levels of burnout. It can lower the costs of care for patients by ensuring they are on the right treatments the first time. Precision health improves the quality of care for everyone involved.

We need to unlock the full value of precision health if we have any hope of reducing variations in care, addressing health disparities, and lowering and controlling growing costs to deliver quality care.

The CDC highlights the value of precision health in not only our ability to diagnose and treat patients, but also this approach to care “can better predict, prevent, treat, and manage disease.” 

Everyone wants to treat and manage the diseases impacting patients that are needing sick care in our delivery system. If we can prevent and predict it before they get sick, that is infinitely better. What will it take to get there with healthcare?

 

Critical Insights, Analytics, and Solutions for Precision Health

Over 2.3 trillion gigabytes of data are generated every year in healthcare. Equal to: 

All the data is almost useless without a method to ingest, organize, and normalize it into actionable information that is meaningful for providers and patients. Healthcare professionals require streamlined insights to break through the noise in each  7-minute patient visit. 

Precision Health is one of the many silver bullets that has the potential to cure what ails our current U.S. health systems. 

 

Precision Health is powered by more and more data 

We have networks that provide our news and entertainment that leverage our interests to suggest information and programming we would find valuable–saving us time and not wasting money on things we would not. We have complex networks that tie together our social and work relationships. Without networks of independent banks working together, we all might be socially distancing at our local branch with masks on trying to perform financial transactions. 

Healthcare is the last industry to embrace digital transformation to improve the lives of the people who depend on it and those professionals who work inside our care delivery system. We are seeing huge strides in financial technology that enable safety and security for our financial assets, but not in healthcare for our physical and mental assets.

Why can’t we have secure networks that work together in healthcare?

We can.

The rapid advances in secure cloud technologies powering machine learning, artificial intelligence, and big data in financial services, is available and emerging in precision health and healthcare. 

A new category of Precision Health Insight Networks (PHINs) is making this possible for organizations of all sizes in healthcare who are responsible for managing complex patient information securely across networks. These PHINs provide critical insights, analytics, and solutions for precision health with ever-faster time to value.

PHIN

The beauty of PHINs is they take the stress of wasteful practices out of the system and off the providers who are critical to help usher in this new era of personalized, high-value care everyone can benefit from and embrace—profitably improving patients’ lives through value-based care by identifying and connecting data to the delivery of high-value care.

We have all heard the stories of systems that have invested in data lakes and enterprise data warehouses that have not produced the meaningful and actionable insights promised. Can we all agree that most health systems, providers, and payers simply lack the expertise to securely ingest, organize, and normalize new and expanding data sets in real-time to drive better decision making and improve health outcomes? The cost and effort to maintain the data is growing out of control.

It is incredibly discouraging for our healthcare system to have so little to show after gathering trillions of gigabytes of patient data without usable and meaningful insights. 

We’re asking our caregivers to perform an impossible task in our data-rich world. Without the insights provided by precision health, having all of the practice-changing evidence and data sets in the world becomes futile–leaving administrators frustrated and care providers exhausted trying to keep up with complex volume-based models to remain profitable.

New insight networks for precision health solve these complex problems by transforming live data into valuable and actionable healthcare insights much like ATMs did in banking to give you valuable information for your financial assets. PHINs are helping patients and families make it out of the $17 billion healthcare delivery system unscathed by avoiding costly and harmful adverse events.  

Experts in Precision Health Insight Networks (PHINs) deliver on precision testing and prescribing for mass personalization that the old-school, volume-based, fee-for-service care models will never achieve. 

There simply is no room for these status quo models that deliver ineffective, harmful trial-and-error and costly, one-size-fits-all care that varies wildly from facility to facility. 

Now is the time to invest in Precision Health Insight Networks for high-value care. They deliver insights our healthcare leaders and providers can take action on with precision–the right patients, right tests, and right prescriptions. All right now.

These advances in healthcare from PHINs are occurring at the intersection of Digital Transformation, Personalized Medicine, and Population Health today.

precision health insight network

This emerging category of solutions holds tremendous promise to deliver countless breakthroughs that will forever change the way healthcare is delivered, saving millions of lives and billions of dollars.

 

hc1 powers Precision Health Insight Networks (PHINs)

The hc1 Platform™ is crafted to address the problems with precision health today. The Platform is purpose-built to ingest, normalize, and organize disparate healthcare data at scale; infinitely expandable, immediately accessible, ultra-high availability on the AWS cloud stack. We are the company behind the emerging category PHINs, a topic we will explore in-depth during the Precision Health Virtual Summit with Becker’s and our partners AWS and Quest on November 16-17.

 

PHINs in action

Everyone knows what happened in the United States during March with COVID-19. All businesses were impacted by the simultaneous national shutdown. A number of businesses decided to furlough employees immediately and wait it out. Others went into action to help. Our CEO Brad Bostic chose to make a difference–by utilizing our technology stack and our lab relationships to help flatten the curve. Within weeks, we had formed a coalition of lab and technology partners, including AWS, to deliver a lab testing dashboard to aid in the fight against the spread. 

On April 3, CV19Dashboard.org was made available to frontline workers in healthcare and government with data from over 20,000 lab ordering locations. At the time, much of the data was locked away in case reports that came in as much as 8-14 days in arrears and riddled with errors. Our anonymized dashboard was near-real time with lab results directly from the sources of testing activity. It evolved to provide a real-time Local Risk Index (LRI) that showed leaders where hotspots of virus activity were trending around the US and in local communities. We even built a special version of the LRI county map for Dr. Scott Gottlieb and AEI.org that has had over 100K users since May 1. The hc1 team won awards and recognition for our response to the global pandemic. This coordination and collaboration across labs does not happen without PHINs built on top of outbreak signal solutions powered by AWS. We accomplished in weeks what would have taken others months, if not years, to pull together. 

Other solutions were spawned from this insight network solution for COVID-19. A great example is our solution for the state of Arizona with our partner Sonora Quest for their most vulnerable populations in Long-Term Care (LTC) facilities. It was a solution that provided a command center for employees and patients to monitor testing and the spread of the novel coronavirus. Arizona was lauded as a model state for how they addressed the crisis around testing and overcame issues related to data reporting. Our team helped make that happen.

Employers looking to get back into the office or back to campus, now have hc1 Workforce Advisor™ as well, to help them manage through this ongoing pandemic. Like the LTC solution, we have partnered with organizations in lab testing, as well as contact tracing app providers, to integrate our lab testing data, command center, and local risk insights for a full suite employer solution to help employees return with confidence.

Is your organization ready to deliver safe, effective, affordable, and personalized care?

Start by connecting data to delivery with better health outcomes.

By Carson Goff
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July 22, 2019

The past few years have seen significant changes in the opioid epidemic. Here are five emerging trends to keep an eye on.

Opioid prescribing rates are declining.

In 2017, the opioid prescribing rate hit a 10-year low. Doctors wrote 58.7 prescriptions per 100 persons, a total of more than 191 million total opioid prescriptions. The percentage of patients prescribed opioids was lower in more densely populated counties than among less populated rural counties. All areas, however, experienced substantial decreases in opioid prescribing over time.

Sources: Opioid Prescribing Rates in Nonmetropolitan and Metropolitan Counties Among Primary Care Providers Using an Electronic Health Record System — United States, 2014–2017  and U.S. Opioid Prescribing Rate Maps

Total number of drug overdose deaths dropped.

In 2018 the total number of overall drug overdose deaths declined for the first time since 1990. The drop of about 5 percent is attributed to a reduction in deaths from prescription opioid painkillers. Fatal overdoses involving other drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine continued to rise, however.

Even with the decline, more than 68,000 overdose deaths in 2018, still exceeded the peak number of annual deaths from car crashes, AIDS or guns.

Source: Drug Overdose Deaths Drop in U.S. for First Time Since 1990

Heroin and synthetic opioids are increasingly implicated in overdoses.

Synthetic opioid involvement in opioid-related overdose deaths involving prescription opioids, heroin and all other illicit or psychotherapeutic drugs increased significantly from 14.3 percent of opioid-related deaths in 2010 to 45.9 percent in 2016. Researchers suspect these numbers are likely under-estimates, because in 15 to 25 percent of death certificates the type of drug(s) involved in the overdose was not specified.

In 2016, synthetic opioids eclipsed prescription opioids as the most common drug involved in overdose deaths in the United States. Synthetic opioids are increasingly found in illicit drug supplies of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and counterfeit pills.

Source: Changes in Synthetic Opioid Involvement in Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 2010-2016

Prevalence of gastroschisis, a serious birth defect of the abdominal wall, has increased.

Gastroschisis causes some of the abdominal contents to extend outside the body at birth. During 2011–2015, gastroschisis prevalence was 10 percent higher than the prior four years at 4.5 per 10,000 live births. A higher prevalence of gastroschisis in areas has been seen where opioid prescriptions rates were high, supporting epidemiologic data suggesting an association between opioid use during pregnancy and gastroschisis.

Gastroschisis requires surgical repair after birth and is associated with digestive and feeding complications during infancy, which can affect development. The average cost of hospitalization and physician fees for patients with gastroschisis is $123,200.

Source: Gastroschisis Trends and Ecologic Link to Opioid Prescription Rates — United States, 2006–2015 and Gastroschisis: small hole, big cost.

Incidences of infectious diseases are growing.

The rate of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections among people who inject drugs more than doubled between 2011 and 2016. Viral infections like HIV and hepatitis C are transmitted between individuals through high-risk injection practices, such as sharing syringes and drug paraphernalia and using high dead-space syringes. In 2016, injection opioid use was responsible for 13 percent of new HIV diagnoses.

Contamination of the drugs, drug injection paraphernalia and the injection site with bacterial and fungal pathogens can also cause infections at the site of injection, such as cellulitis and skin abscesses, or at other sites in the body, such as infective endocarditis and osteomyelitis.

Opioid-related infectious disease is not isolated to injection drug users. Poor intestinal flow caused by opioid use may be associated with increased risk of severe Clostridium difficile infection during inpatient treatment.

Source: Opioids and Infectious Diseases: A Converging Public Health Crisis

By Carson Goff
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December 30, 2019

The National Center for Biotechnology Information defines high-value care as “the best care for the patient, with the optimal result for the circumstances, delivered at the right price.”1 Over the past few years, the expectation for high-value care has become formalized in national policies and regulatory mandates, yet it is still not the predominant standard of care.

Engaging healthcare providers in high-value care in 2020 will be critical for the U.S. healthcare industry.

Future reimbursement is at risk. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and other payers have shifted toward value-based reimbursements. They use quality, cost, and efficiency measures to determine reimbursement. CMS has tied 5 percent of clinicians’ revenue in 2020 to their 2018 performance. The amount at risk will increase to 9 percent in 2022 based on 2020 performance.2

Healthcare costs are increasing. Global healthcare spending is projected to increase to $10.1 trillion by 2022. Estimates suggest $3 trillion of that money is spent on waste, for which the United States accounts for a third.3-4 Waste is any service, product, or process that does not help patients and is therefore unnecessary.5 Eliminating waste reduces cost and increases the value of care.

Overtesting and non-optimized prescribing cause patient harm. More than 770,000 injuries and deaths are caused by adverse medication events each year, costing as much as $5.6 billion.6 Making sure the right patient gets the right test or the right prescription at the right time is at the core of value-based care.

Successfully engaging healthcare providers in high-value care requires equipping them with knowledge and tools. We can start with education to guide providers toward ways they can participate in high-value care. The Choosing Wisely Campaign is a good resource for evidence-based recommendations.

Then we can put processes and checkpoints in place that reduce and eliminate waste while protecting patients from harm. Electronic health record systems can be valuable tools to automate high-value practices.

Finally, we can improve the accessibility and presentation of information used in clinical decision-making.  Historically health system data has been anything but accessible. For years, data has been collected and defined by siloed entities in non-standardized and legacy IT systems. Health informatics, however, is increasingly connecting systems and allowing real-time analysis of this complex information.

hc1 is transforming lab data into personalized healthcare insights. The hc1 High-Value Care Platform™ eliminates waste and personalizes care for health systems and diagnostic laboratories nationwide by turning previously static lab data into actionable healthcare insights. Using the hc1 platform, health systems can improve clinical outcomes and reduce medical spend. Visit hc1.com to read more about the hc1 Platform and other high-value care initiatives.

 

References

  1. Committee on the Learning Health Care System in America; Institute of Medicine; Smith M, Saunders R, Stuckhardt L, et al., editors. (2013 May 10). Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 8, Achieving and Rewarding High-Value Care. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207237/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=r360
  2. Farah, MD, MHA, M. (9 Apr 2019). In search of high-value care: Six steps that can help your team. The Hospitalist. https://www.the-hospitalist.org/hospitalist/article/198542/leadership-training/search-high-value-care
  3. Leung, T. I., Merode, G.G. (2018 Dec 22). Value-Based Health Care Supported by Data Science. Fundamentals of Clinical Data Science pp 193-212. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-99713-1_14.
  4. Kimpen, J. (12 Feb 2019). Here’s how to make ‘value-based healthcare’ a reality. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/here-s-how-to-make-value-based-healthcare-a-reality/
  5. Razmaria AA. High-Value Care. JAMA. 2015;314(22):2462. doi: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2015.16990
  6. World Health Organization. Patient Safety. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/patient-safety 
By Lauren VanDenBoom
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November 12, 2019

Efforts to implement value-based healthcare (improved outcomes for less cost) are becoming increasingly vital as global, particularly U.S., healthcare spending soars. Global healthcare spending is projected to increase to $10.1 trillion by 2022. Estimates suggest $3 trillion of that money is spent on waste, for which the United States accounts for a third. The United States healthcare spend is the highest, 5 percent more than the next highest-spending country.1,2

 

Value-based healthcare has brought information technology, and particularly data management, into the forefront. Determining value, as well as increasing value, requires significant data analytics to identify, measure, and improve outcomes. For efficient and accurate analysis, data must first be accessible and relational. This means retrieving and aligning data for medical and health care services, supportive services, processes, research, and innovation.1

 

Historically health system data has been anything but accessible. For years data has been collected and defined by siloed entities in non-standardized and legacy IT systems. Health informatics, however, is increasingly connecting systems and allowing real-time analysis of this complex information. Bridges can now be built between the silos and the data stored within can be combined and shared more easily.2

Improved data management resulting from the shift to value-based care is manifesting itself in several important ways. Significant improvements in clinical data exchange are already occurring and are predicted to occur in the next decade.3 These improvements include:

Improved data sharing within and across healthcare networks. More records system vendors are working together and solutions like the hc1 High-Value Care Platform™ are making data more manageable and transferable. The federal government is also calling for healthcare providers and vendors to use systems that facilitate rather than impede the exchange of information.3

Added communications capability and easier interaction for increasingly tech-savvy patients and healthcare providers. Gone are the days when a majority of patients were uncomfortable with technology and providers avoided contact with them outside of office visits. Health system portals are giving patients and providers easy access to records and efficient means of secure communication that save time and improve interactions. This increased communications capability also applies to interaction between healthcare providers, such as between primary care providers (PCPs) and specialists or PCPs and pharmacists.3

Personalized care and precision medicine. Through the use of pharmacogenetic testing, we can learn how our bodies are likely to process and react to prescribed medication. With the results in hand, as well as knowledge of lifestyle, allergies, and current medications, healthcare providers can personalize treatment. Precision medicine, however, requires analysis of these multiple data points. Solutions like hc1 PGx Advisor™ are helping providers efficiently access and analyze this data.

Faster transition from research to practice. Insights gained through research once took years before becoming part of regular medical practice. Providers strapped for time were unable to easily stay current on all of the latest publications and guidelines. With modern data systems, guidelines and recommendations can be loaded into clinical data systems and made available for reference during related patient interactions. Having relevant, real-time clinical information helps guide prescribing, testing and treatment while reducing waste and improving outcomes.3

In 2011, hc1 was born from our founder’s belief that every patient is unique and should be treated that way. Today the hc1 High-Value Care Platform™ eliminates waste and personalizes care for health systems and diagnostic laboratories nationwide by turning previously static lab data into actionable healthcare insights. Using the hc1 platform, health systems can improve clinical outcomes and reduce medical spend. Request a demo to learn more.

References

  1. Leung, T. I., Merode, G.G. (2018 Dec 22). Value-Based Health Care Supported by Data Science. Fundamentals of Clinical Data Science pp 193-212. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-99713-1_14.
  2. Kimpen, J. (12 Feb 2019). Here’s how to make ‘value-based healthcare’ a reality. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/here-s-how-to-make-value-based-healthcare-a-reality/
  3. HDM Staff. (27 Sept 2019). How IT will impact healthcare in the next decade. Health Data Management. https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/how-it-will-impact-healthcare-in-the-next-decade