Frost & Sullivan: Care Team Implementation a Critical First Step in Medical Practices' Transition to Accountable Care
-- The future of care teams will enhance patient engagement tools
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, Feb. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- As accountable care transforms the U.S. healthcare system, changing culture is becoming a leading challenge for providers. For decades, primary care physicians and specialists have practiced in autonomous, independent silos as a result of prospective payment requirements for reimbursement. However, as doctors begin to augment their practices to manage defined populations, it has become evident that to meet this challenge, providers will need to adapt and reorganize around clinical care teams.
The processes, thoughts and requirements for implementing care teams requires in-depth analysis and assessment of the current organizational structure and behavior of an independent practice, including the level of health IT infrastructure in place to support this movement.
Frost & Sullivan's new white paper, The Accountable Care Team: A Guide for Care Delivery Transformation (http://www.connectedhealth.frost.com), profiles the innovative approach of Oregon-based Providence Health & Services, a progressive integrated delivery network. The analysis examines the comprehensive process to transform independent physician practices into care teams as a strategy to succeed in an accountable care environment. It also presents an implementation model for healthcare organizations to consider prior to the adoption and deployment of care teams and examines how electronic health records (EHRs) can facilitate and sustain this transformation.
For more information on this analysis or to access this white paper, please email Jennifer Carson, Corporate Communications, at jennifer.carson@frost.com.
Apart from their organizational structure's ability to accommodate care teams, health systems also have to assess their health IT- and EHR-readiness before taking any steps to transform their care delivery system. In fact, EHR technology is central to the success of care teams and their ability to coordinate care across the enterprise, connecting providers, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, patients, their families and caregivers. The weakest links in the organization will be doctors who lack the experience or the understanding to transform an independent medical practice into a care team.
"Transforming a current delivery system into one that implements care teams requires strategic planning and operational insight," said Frost & Sullivan Connected Health Senior Industry Analyst Patrick Riley. "This translates to an analysis of the ways in which the organization is staffed, trained and prepared to embrace care teams."
Once the care teams are identified, healthcare organizations must evaluate the methods of electronically sharing health information along the care continuum. They must also be able to assess if they can deliver the health analytics required to effectively intervene in personal care plans and thereby, prevent or halt the progression of the identified chronic disease.
Accountable care will require advanced population analytics to help orchestrate and optimize collaboration among the various providers. Clinical and business intelligence must be made available to providers in an easily consumable format, at all points of care along the continuum.
In addition to analytics, enhanced provider-to-provider communication will enable the enterprise to transform its primary care IT infrastructure from a business platform supporting individual providers, to a cohesive technology environment that supports integrated care teams.
"Just as physicians must supply the leadership to sustain care teams, so must the executive leadership respond with its own level of new leadership to support IT requirements and the creation of core, clinic-based teams," noted Riley.
Frost & Sullivan analysis has revealed an emerging leader developing solutions for population health and patient relationship management. Kryptiq, a healthcare IT industry innovator, enables providers to identify care opportunities informed by clinical and financial data at the point-of-care. By unifying care teams, and connecting provider organizations to the Surescripts Health Information Network, Kryptiq enables healthcare delivery organizations to improve patient care quality, practice efficiency and accountability.
Kryptiq's CareManager is embedded deeply into the EHR. It is an intuitive population health management solution that aligns the care team with the decisions made at the point of care by presenting the data, dashboards and interventions to more effectively manage clinical and financial risk.
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Jennifer Carson
Corporate Communications – North America
P: +1.210.247.2450
E: jennifer.carson@frost.com
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