These are some of the statistics which highlight this grim and pertinent issue:

1. 134 million adverse events occur each year due to unsafe care in hospitals in low and middle-income countries, resulting in 2.6 million deaths.
2. Unsafe care is likely to be one of the 10 leading causes of death/disability worldwide.
3. Unsafe medication practices and medication errors results in many casualties and massive amount of money being lost. Globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion per year.
4. More than 1 million patients die annually from complications dues to surgery.
5. Unsafe surgical care procedures cause complications in upto 25% of patients, affecting 7 million patients.
6. About half of diagnostic errors – failure to identify the nature of illness – have the potential to cause several harm.
7. 10 out of every 100 hospitalized patients will acquire one or more healthcare associated infections.

Patient Safety Day was established by WHO to bring in a patient safety culture that promotes partnership with patients, encourages reporting and learning from errors, and creates a blame-free environment where health workers are empowered and trained to reduce errors. In today’s tech heavy world where rapid advancements are being made the way healthcare is provided, patient harm due to such practices is totally unacceptable. An urgent action-plan by countries and partners around the world is required to reduce patient harm in health care. Patient safety and quality of care are essential for delivering effective health services and achieving universal health coverage.

Investment in improving patient safety can lead to significant financial savings. The cost of prevention is much lower than the cost of treatment due to harm. In the United States alone, focused safety improvements led to an estimated US$28 billion in savings in Medicare hospitals between 2010 and 2015. Greater patient involvement is the key to safer care. Engaging patients can reduce the burden of harm by up to 15%, saving billions of dollars each year.

Healthcare providers and administrators must explore opportunities to invest and implement much more safer practices to improve patient, staff and visitors safety. This will enhance awareness about patient safety and hence entail significant benefits for all the parties involved.

Sources:

https://www.who.int/

https://www.thehindu.com/

https://patientsafetymovement.org/

The post Patient Safety as a Global Health Priority appeared first on New Age Healthcare.

Approximately 20-30% of people globally have flat foot or low arches. In India, 30% of its population is flat footed.

Despite it being so common, it is one of the most poorly understood and neglected pathologies in foot and ankle region especially in the Indian perspective.

How can you or your child get Flatfeet?

While flat foot is a normal entity in infants and toddlers, arches do develop in the first decade of life as the child becomes older. Flat feet tend to be genetic and run in the families. Most of the children have flexible pes-planus in which the arches appear when the child stands on his toes or during sitting but collapses on standing upright.

Other major causes of flat foot include:

• An abnormal bone in the inner side of the foot is frequently associated with a flat foot deformity in young adults
• A rare condition characterized by an abnormal connection between two bones in the foot (known as Tarsal Coalition)
• Years of wear & tear weaken the posterior tibial tendon. It is considered as the main cause of Flat foot in adults.
• Inflammatory arthritis: Diseases like Rheumatoid Arthritis may damage the tendons and ligament of foot thus leading to flat foot

What are the symptoms?

Flat foot can easily be seen in an individual on inspection. It leads to loss of arch or gap in inner aspect of the feet. It also causes the heel of the foot to shift outwards (valgus) when viewed from the back. In some cases, the front of the foot may deviate outwards as well (termed forefoot abduction).

Flat foot in many a case is asymptomatic and can be detected on routine physical examination/ school camps. But in some patients, it may be associated with symptoms which can occasionally be debilitating. It has also been proven that flat foot will not just affect the foot but the alignment of the whole lower limb including the back as well.

Symptoms and consequences of flat foot include:

• Pain and fatigue in foot- inner aspect or outer aspect in prolonged cases.
• Reduced enthusiasm to run/ participate in sports for a child
• Clumsy gait
• Swelling in inside of ankle
• Deformity in your heel
• Difficulty in rising up on your toes
• Excessive wear of the inner side of shoe
• Early development of arthritis of foot
• Bunions
• Hammer toes
• Shin splints and stress fractures
• Growing pain
• Plantar fasciitis (heel pain)
• Knee pain
• Hip pain
• Back pain

Most of the symptoms get worse with activity including walking and running thus forcing the person to walk less. As a consequence, it can lead to secondary complications including obesity and worsening of existing/ development of new metabolic problems.

How can flat foot be evaluated/ checked?

If you believe you might have flat foot, it is prudent to get it checked from an orthopedic surgeon. Clinical evaluation involves confirming the diagnosis, looking at the extent of deformity, see if it is flexible or rigid deformity and also look for secondary effects of flat foot. It is normally followed by doing x-rays of feet and ankle in different angles in both standing and sitting position. In some cases, further investigations like CT scan and MRI might be needed to gain more information.

Does Flat foot always need surgery?

Flatfoot in most cases can be managed non-operatively. Observation in children less than 10 years is entirely reasonable to look for development of arch as the age progresses. For those who have minimal/ no symptoms, a trial of insoles customized to the patient’s foot is the first line of treatment. The insoles generally involve medial (inner) arch support with a medial heel wedge to correct the abnormal loading secondary to arch abnormality. Physiotherapy can also be tried to alleviate the symptoms. In cases where relief is not obtained despite above mentioned non-operative measures, surgery may be done to realign the feet.

Exercises for flat feet

Physiotherapy can also be helpful in some cases with flat feet. It has been noted that tight calf (gastrocnemius) muscles are associated with worsening of symptoms due to flat feet. In such cases, stretching of tight calf muscles can be helpful in relieving the symptoms. Some exercises like short foot exercises have been shown to strengthen the intrinsic muscles of the foot and hence help in correcting flat and overpronated foot but its evidence is limited.

Can flat feet be corrected in adults?

There is no evidence to suggest that overpronation of flat foot can be corrected spontaneously or without any intervention in adults. As mentioned previously, some exercises have shown to be of slight benefit in rebuilding fallen arches in early flat foot but the evidence is limited. Similarly insoles can only correct the abnormal loading pattern of the flatfoot but by themselves can’t form the arch. Only surgical intervention has shown to improve the arch in adults as well as children.

Type of surgery depends upon the severity of deformity and the cause of flat foot. In few cases with overpronated feet, a minimally invasive procedure known as Extra-Osseus Talo Tarsal Stabilization (EOTTS) can be performed. Performed as a day surgery, EOTTS using Hyprocure can be done using a small incision and involves insertion of a titanium stent in the space between ankle bone (talus) and the heel bone (calcaneum). It is a quick surgical procedure with minimal side effects and a rapid and significant recovery. It is one of the few procedures to rebuild arch without doing any surgery for bone.

This procedure is now available in India and only few surgeons are accredited to perform this procedure. It can be performed as a stand-alone procedure or can be combined with other procedures for flat foot reconstruction. Other surgical options are relatively major procedures and need a longer recovery period. In patients where the deformity is present for a very long period and has been complicated by arthritis, a major surgery like fusion is contemplated.

Myth-busters

In view of lack of awareness and proper understanding, lot of myths exists about flat feet.

First is that flat feet will get better with time. Though it can happen in the first decade of life, flat foot will stay with life if an adolescent has it.

Secondly, flat feet won’t cause any symptoms. As it is a structural abnormality, the inner structures of the feet will get perennially stretched and the foot will always be loaded abnormally. Though it is hard to predict which flat feet will develop symptoms and which won’t but they are more prone to develop pain and fatigue in later years of their life.

Third, there is no treatment and you have to live with it. With the advent of newer treatment strategies and development of implants like Hyprocure (EOTTS), the flat foot surgery has really simplified if detected and addressed at an early stage.

Flat foot is a one of the commonest problems among children and adults which often goes undiagnosed. This ailment does require proper intervention and can be controlled through proper medical consultation and regimes.

About the Author

Dr. Anuj Chawla is one of the leading Orthopedics and foot & ankle surgeon in India. He is the only surgeon in Gurgaon region accredited to perform Hyprocure, a minimally invasive surgical procedure for flat feet. He can be contacted at dranujchawla@gmail.com.

For consultation with Dr. Anuj, book an appointment by visiting the website: http://dranujchawla.com/

The post No mean ‘feet’ appeared first on New Age Healthcare.

On 22^nd March, World Water Day was celebrated, which focuses on the importance of water and how can we reduce floods, droughts and water pollution. But are we doing enough? On this very day, Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), released a report which highlights that around 70% of Delhi’s (capital of India) drinking water is unsafe for consumption. Ex-chairman of MCD’s public health committee Dr. VK Monga said, “At least 20% of people in Delhi are not getting water which is drinkable by Indian standards.” And this issue is very similar across many cities across India.

People are aware of this grave situation and are flocking to installation of water purifiers at their households and commercial premisesIndia’s water purifier market is expected to reach $4.1 billion by the end of 2024 vs. $1.1 billion in 2015, at a CAGR of 15.4%. The technologies available in the India water purifier market are gravity purifier, RO purifier, sediment purifier, water softener, and UV purifier.

However, most of the water purifiers in the market have one major drawback that they make the water acidic i.e. it reduces the pH of water below 7 during the purifying process, hampering the quality and the taste of the drinking water. Also, the RO (reverse osmosis) process, adopted by most of the water purifiers available today, results in loss of certain important minerals. To counter these with the objective of providing clean and safe drinking water, a leading electrical equipment conglomerate, Havells , has made a recent entry to the market with its innovative range of water purifiers. Havells water-purifiers provide 100% RO and UV purification as 100% water passes through the RO membrane and then UV purification to ensure absolutely safe and healthy drinking water. These water purifiers are designed with powerful 8 stage purification procedure which effectively removes the pollutants.

A major component of Havells’s water purifiers is the Revitalizer which restructures the water molecules and makes it biologically active to improve the hydrations and mineral absorption. Mineral Fortification technology implemented corrects the pH of the purified water, and adds wide spectrum of natural minerals with trace elements delivering healthy and clean safe drinking water for consumption. Some of the variants come with smart feather-touch panel keeping in mind the convenience and ease-of-use for the consumers.

You can easily purchase these transformative water purifiers online and compare their features or write to wecarewaterpurifier@havells.com for any product related information.

The post Are we running out of clean drinking water and can technology help? appeared first on New Age Healthcare.

Burgeoning Demand for Clean Water

India is the fourth-largest market for water treatment equipment in Asia-Pacific. In 2016, it accounted for a market share of 11.0%, in terms of value, of the water treatment equipment market in Asia- Pacific. It is also projected to be an emerging market because of the growing municipal manufacturing industries, increase in investments from the international companies for setting up their production plants in the country, and increasing demand for treated water from the population. The major drivers of the increasing demand for water treatment include increasing population, rapid urbanization, increasing pressure on quality maintenance of municipal water supplies, and stringent policy regulations.

Market Dynamics

The Way Forward:

To address this challenge of providing safe and clean drinking water to people in India, organizations today are looking at ways to optimize costs, increase productivity, and enhance customer satisfaction. Many Indian consumers are using point-of-use (POU) water purifiers which run on the following technologies for removal of persistent as well as emerging pollutants from water:

• Ultraviolet technology (UV)
• Ultra filtration (UF)
• Nano filtration (NF)
• Reverse Osmosis (RO)
• Iodine or Chlorine as disinfectant

However, majority of the existing water purifiers do more harm than good through the RO+UV technique. UF cartridge in them is unable to remove harmful chemicals such as Arsenic, Lead, Chromium & Pesticides etc. Also, during RO filtration a portion of water is passed through UF purification only which leads to mixing of pure & impure water towards the end of the process which contradicts the major purpose of the entire purification process. More importantly, this lowers the pH of water below 7 which deteriorates the quality and taste of water.

New Technology from Havells:

The latest entrant in market, Havells (a leading billion-dollar electrical equipment conglomerate in India), is all set to address such issues and transform the purification process through its powerful 8-stage purification process and ultimately delivering clean and safe drinking water to people of India.

Havells water-purifiers provides absolute safety through 100% RO and UV Purification to ure safe and healthy drinking water. The product’s mineralz fortification technology balances pH level of purified water and re-mineralises it by adding naturally occurring essential minerals and salts. Another major component of these water-purifiers is the revitalizer which restructures water molecules, making it biologically active and hence improves the bio-availability and absorption of water in the body.

Havells has launched six variants into the market that are priced between Rs 10,499 and Rs 23,999. Consumers can also enjoy very consumer-friendly post-purchase maintenance packages which can be modified as per the need. These variants are packed with advanced consumer-friendly features making it convenient to install and use with elements such as purification process indicator, capacitive smart touch user interface (in high-end variant) and 3 smart programmable dispensing options providing ease of operation.

You can learn more about product features of all the variants and best-in-class double UV purification technology by clicking here. These are readily available at your nearest consumer retail store and will be made available online on all leading ecommerce portals in coming months. Watch this space for more on this looming crisis of non-availability of clean drinking water, the challenges in addressing this and how an innovative company like Havells can overcome these issues by adoption of the latest technology and consumer-friendly design.

The post Technological advancement and futuristic design to revolutionize water purification market appeared first on New Age Healthcare.

by Daffodil Hotel

The post The Medical Benefits of Taking a Holiday appeared first on New Age Healthcare.

There are lots of hypothetical situations and theories about where a virus will come from, what it will do and the devastation it will have. In fact, there are already scientists working on vaccines that the human population may need in the event of a global outbreak. There’s actually a World Health Organisation Global Vaccine Plan!

In this infographic, we take a look at some of the possible pandemics of the future and how you can best prepare yourself against the spread of germs.

by Gap Medics.

Gap Medics is the world’s leading provider of international hospital work experience placements for school and university students.

Follow @GapMedics

The post Future Pandemics: A Global Concern? appeared first on New Age Healthcare.

What is risk adjustment?

Risk adjustment over the years has become a key mechanism used in healthcare to predict the costs incurred and ensure appropriate payments for Medicare Advantage plans, Part D plans, and health plans. Historically, it was only used in Medicaid and Medicare but lately has been an actuarial tool to ensure that health insurance plans have adequate funding and no financial hindrance in providing care to high-risk, high-need patients. Insurance companies and their plans are compared on the basis of quality and services they offer, providing a strong foundation to value-based purchasing.

Why is risk adjustment so important?

Risk adjustment advocates fair payments to health insurance plans by judging them on their efficiency and encouraging the provision of high-quality care. Beyond that, here’s why risk adjustment is important:

• A critical tool in quality reporting and monitoring measures.
• Provides a neutral field where providers and payers can be compared to their peers on the basis of their quality and efficiency.
• Combining risk scores and evidence-based models with risk adjustment helps providers and care teams design post-discharge plans with intense follow-ups.
• With predictive analytics, risk adjustment models may be used to capture all the dimensions of relevant patient risk.

How is risk adjustment used in healthcare?

Healthcare risk adjustment methodologies can be used to account for changes in severity and case mixes for patients over time. Risk adjustment has been critical in reducing “cherry picking” among health plans. Dimensions of risk in care can broadly be categorized into three categories:

• Health status
• Patient health-related behavior
• Social determinants

It’s important to ensure that by providing incentives to enroll high-cost individuals, there are necessary resources available to provide efficient and effective treatment to the relatively healthy population without overcompensation. The methodology used to risk-adjust premiums varies on the following:

• Patient population and their breakdown
• Source of payment
• Healthcare market regulation

On the macro level, unless the state combines its individual and small group markets, separate risk adjustment systems operate in each market. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), developed a risk adjustment methodology, where individual risk scores are assigned to each enrollee. The diagnoses are grouped into a Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) and are assigned a numerical value which is averaged to calculate the plan’s average risk score. Payments and charges are calculated by comparing each plan’s average risk score to a baseline premium.

How ignoring risk adjustment can cost you?

In the current payment models, payments are risk adjusted, which makes it extremely important for every risk to be tracked and accounted for during reporting processes. Generally 1 risk point equates to $10,000 in Medicare contracts, therefore downcoding any patient’s data erroneously could mean thousands of dollar loss for the healthcare organization. It has been observed that around 15-25% of the risks are downcoded.

So for instance, if an organization has downcoded 15% of the risks erroneously equating to 1500 points, that would be roughly equal to savings opportunity worth $15Mn!

Data fuelling risk adjustment

Access to key data on enrollees’ health conditions is paramount for risk adjustment to work. Clinical data contains the most important details about patient health and risk that simply can’t be obtained from claims data alone. However, there are several obstacles:

• Thorough data documentation: Healthcare data comes in from various sources, and to collect, incorporate, and document patient data incoming from EHRs to wearable trackers is a costly and a time-consuming process. It’s important that physicians and health coaches are able to document patient data on the job, to maintain consistency in documentation.

• Data handling: The storage of data, integration of data sets, retrieval, and use of data are only a few of the subsequent challenges that are not covered by the infrastructure health plans manage. Also in later stages, data sharing becomes a challenge as interoperability between disparate systems is yet to be realized.

• Comprehensive analysis: Majority of clinical data is unstructured, and no meaning can be derived out of it without advanced analytics. Although healthcare IT has developed some sophisticated analytics, the frontier of clinical data analytics is yet to be explored conclusively.

With healthcare IT going leaps and bounds, there’s little doubt that healthcare organizations will leverage these insights and apply them to clinical data management in the future. Advanced analytics capabilities have the potential to not only impact the bottom line of a health plan, but to also improve population health management and help make organization informed decisions about premium pricing, membership expansion, bid rate calculation, etc.

The road ahead
Risk adjustment models and their correct implementation is central to achieving high-quality care. With the growing importance of value in care, the challenges in implementing a broad risk-adjustment framework should be countered to protect physicians from inadequate compensation and provide high-need patients with adequate care. Regardless of changes in administration and patient population, there is one common belief that stays true: complete, accurate, and value-based care. Only time will tell how successful any one risk adjustment model will be, but the fact that risk adjustment is fundamental to value-based care delivery is indispensable.

About the author

Mr. Abhinav Shashank, Co-Founder & CEO at Innovaccer, is an expert in population health management and robust technologies. For the better part of the decade he has been working to revolutionize healthcare delivery with 25+ value-focused organization and making over 10 million lives better. He has also spoken at numerous healthcare conference on the role of HealthIT in modern healthcare. You can reach out to him at: abhinav.shashank@innovaccer.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavshashank/

Twitter: @abhinavshashank

The post Risk Adjustment 101: Ignoring these could cost You Millions appeared first on New Age Healthcare.

As value-based care becomes the primary focus of healthcare organizations, providers now need to broach Population Health Management and to manage it with risk stratification with a delicate balance. It is now important for providers to focus on patients’ individual and distinct health signs and take decisions to take their journey forward to better and quality health.

Before providers deliver care, they should have a prior knowledge of who their patients are, identifying them and finding who needs the care most. In this era of value-based care, risk stratification becomes a necessity: to sort patients into high, moderate and low health risk tiers and delivering appropriate care to address their health needs.

The Need for Risk Stratification

Risk stratification, to put simply, is the process of dividing patients into “buckets” based on their vital health signs, their lifestyles, and medical history. Risk stratification is a framework applied for complete population health management, combining several individual risk scores, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and medical records to create a comprehensive patient profile.

Risk stratification is the foundational step for targeting patients at various levels of risks, and further, scheduling follow-ups and keeping them aligned with their care plans. Here’s why risk stratification is important:

• Predict risks: Risk stratification can help providers to proactively identify patients at risk of unplanned hospital admissions. Almost one-third of all the readmissions that take place in the United States are preventable.
• Patient-specific care plans: Identifying patient-specific risk factors that may pose a threat in future can help physicians and health coaches develop care plans tailored to their needs.
• Understanding population health trends: With a continuous assessment of risk factors and the use of risk scores, providers can understand their patient population and find answers to critical questions.

All in all, it’s the need of the hour to implement risk stratification in any successful population health management model to classify patients into high-risk, low-risk, and rising-risk groups and to achieve the Triple Aim: better health outcomes, quality care and lower costs of care.

Overview of Risk Stratification Methods

There are several models available to stratify a population by risk. Here are a few widely used and recognized ones. :

• Hierarchical Condition Categories (HCCs): The HCC models were designed as part of the Medicare Advantage Program by CMS. It incorporates 70 conditions, all selected from ICD codes and also brings in expected health expenditures.
• Adjusted Clinical Groups (ACG): ACG was developed by John Hopkins University with the ability to stratify risk with a critical review and testing process. It uses both inpatient and outpatient diagnoses and predicts hospital utilizations.
• Elder Risk Assessment (ERA): ERA works for the population over 60 years of age and makes use of their demographic data to assign a risk score to each patient.
• Chronic Comorbidity Count (CCC): CCC is to total count of selected comorbid conditions spanning over six categories, using the public data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The Use of Data

Data analytics is the current buzzword in healthcare, and rightly so. Access to actionable data combined with right analysis helps not only in predicting outcomes, but also improves the ability of care teams to align available resources to what a patient needs. Although data is just a start and not an endpoint, it can be used in several ways to make the process of risk stratification less cumbersome.

• Optimal use of data: Going beyond clinical and claims data to socioeconomic data and other relevant information that describe a patient and integrating multiple sources of information to let providers understand what works best for a patient.
• Performing analytics: Identification of underlying risk factors will alert providers well-in-time of any complication that might occur.
• Monitoring growth and outcomes: Data from previous successes and failures can help care teams redesign care plans and ensure complete patient-centric care.
• Incorporating data into risk scores: Creating risk scores as a blend of behavioral, demographic and clinical data will provide physicians with a holistic view of patients to improve outcomes across the care continuum.

A value-focused organization used Medicaid data, along with real-time hospital admissions, discharge, and transfer data (ADT) from about 80% of hospitals across the state with the aim to provide more than 1800 Primary Care Practices with insights into patient risk status and population health trends. Within the last one year, their efforts have been rewarded with a 5 percent drop in total Medicaid costs along with a 26 percent reduction in inpatient admissions and half the number of preventable readmissions.

The Road Ahead

Risk stratification, in all true sense, is a catalyst in developing successful population health management plans. Only an effective implementation of risk stratification combined with communication and monitoring will guarantee appropriate patient-centric care. The availability of data is not an issue; even the access to data is a challenge that can be combated. The real challenge is transformation – it needs more than analytics and insights; it calls for actionable plans from providers, payers, and patients.

About the Author

Mr. Abhinav Shashank, Co-Founder & CEO at Innovaccer, is an expert in population health management and robust technologies. For the better part of the decade he has been working to revolutionize healthcare delivery with 25+ value-focused organization and making over 10 million lives better. He has also spoken at numerous healthcare conference on the role of HealthIT in modern healthcare. You can reach out to him at: abhinav.shashank@innovaccer.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavshashank/

Twitter: @abhinavshashank

The post The Importance of Risk Stratification in Population Health Management appeared first on New Age Healthcare.

The way we see healthcare today is very different from what it was a couple of decades ago. Back then, we did not have the technology to capture the best practices. But, today we have the capability to use medical data as a source of innovation and create impact at scale. But the question is are we capitalizing on it? Have we made the lives easier for both patients and care teams? Are we close to the goals we started chasing ten years ago?

When we talk about innovation in healthcare, we stumble across intuition. The intuition of care teams enhanced by data-driven approaches. It is not just limited providing connectivity to healthcare organizations; it is also about providing advanced analytics and reducing the cumbersome, tedious work! Like deep diving for hours on Excel or making quality tracking and reporting easier.

The concept of Population Health Management is a new one. It has evolved from an idea to become a clinical discipline that works on developing and continually refining measures to improve the health status of populations. A successful population health management program thrives on the vision to deliver robust and coordinated care through a well-managed partnership network. This said, there is no one definition of Population Health Management, fifty different CIOs in an interview gave different definitions to this term. It is a broad concept and covers a lot under its umbrella.

What does an ordinary Health IT setup lack?

True, the healthcare systems are working on building the skills to interact and develop well-planned health intervention strategies to move away from the traditional fee-for-service model to value-based reimbursements and incorporating value, but they are falling short in many areas:

• Limited EHR capability: EHRs played a pivotal role in digitizing health care, but with EHR technology many restrictions came along. Today, only a few are equipped to support the necessary interoperable standards. To deliver better clinical outcomes, it is of paramount importance that we have the data and right analytics to ensure improvements; something healthcare organizations lack even today.

• Integrating data sources: A patient who is being relocated to a new state and will have a new PCP and Care Coordinator. Can we say with confidence that the patient’s information will be available to the new PCP? In a large healthcare network, there is labs, pharmacy, clinical, claims, and operational data, but the capability to integrate it into a single source of truth is still a challenge for many! This has limited the potential of care teams and made them communicate in a disconnected ecosystem.

• Risk Stratification: 50% of expenditure in healthcare is on 5% patient population! Wouldn’t it be great if we could find these patients and cure them before any acute episode? Back in 2012, about 117 million Americans had one or more chronic conditions, and account for 86% of the entire healthcare spending. The road to population health management will require care teams to recognize at-risk population timely to reduce cost and improve outcomes!

• Creating and monitoring care plans: Curing a patient is a long process; post-acute care is equally important as much inpatient care is! Registered nurses, physicians, and care coordinators have many patients to take care, and this is when technology can help them the best! The available resources can be increased many folds with health IT. Care plans can be generated automatically which can be monitored by caretakers on a regular basis as scheduled initially.

• Engagement: Easy as it may seem, engagement is still a dream yet to come true on the road to population health management. Engagement is critical on two fronts: the provider network and the patient. Healthcare organizations still have to ramp up their efforts on bringing everyone in the loop, and developing effective patient engagement endeavors and promote their outreach.

Population Health Management with Datashop operating system

The transition to value-based care in healthcare industry calls for population health management. One which can help the healthcare organizations in integrating data, performing analytics, performance tracking, quality reporting, reducing network leakage and accelerating developments in the right areas.

With all this in mind, Datashop thrives on delivering a comprehensive population health management solution that gives real-time insights to caregivers and allows them to identify and mend the care gaps within the defined population. Datashop works on some major fronts:

• Seamless data integration: Datashop comes with pre-built connectors to 50+ widely-used EMR systems and can ingest structured as well as unstructured clinical, claims, labs, pharmacy, and operational data and present it in a clean and standardized form. Every single patient’s data is mapped out on the network and EMPI is assigned to him for future references.

• Risk stratification: According to various risk models, Datashop’s risk Navigator assigns risk scores to the patients and stratifies population based on their vital medical signs. Furthermore, providers and payers can create patient and disease registries for a better understanding of the population.

• Identifying and Addressing care gaps: Once the data is aggregated, it is presented as a holistic, Patient 360 record where providers can look at every patient profile. Once the healthcare networks have the view of all the patient sorted according to various parameters such as disease type, risk scores, etc. they can easily identify the at-risk population and engage them timely.

• Monitor Outcomes: It’s extremely important that healthcare systems track their growth and take corrective measures to sustain it. Datashop equips providers with drilled-down analysis which they can use to evaluate their clinical outcomes, the cost of care and patient satisfaction levels. Combined with predictive analytics, healthcare organizations can determine probable outcomes and take some measures to correct their course of action.

• Care management: Datashop provides the care teams with advanced care coordination. Providers can easily track the patients who are in need of chronic care. Additionally, Datashop’s Artificially intelligent care coordination streamlines the process. A health coach can view all the recently discharged or at-risk patients in a timeline fashion. Push alerts about such population make it really easy for them keep up with the population trend.Moreover, Datashop provides intuitive and visually adaptive dashboards which remove the hard work required while dealing with excel sheets, saving a lot of time for the care teams. Datashop also provides the capability to create custom measures and dashboard for a better understanding of population and one’s network’s performance.

Into the Future: A Value-Based Care World

Most healthcare organizations understand the potential and value of an effective population health management solution, but only a few have been able to achieve the goals. The need of the hour is the right platform that combines technology with analytics and approaches the ultimate goal of population health management with a methodical approach. Datashop provides data integration on its bi-directionally interoperable platform that helps healthcare organizations overcome the barriers to realizing their benchmarks and extend their commitment to their patients at lowered costs, achieving true value-based outcomes.

One needs to be future-ready to be able to deal with the challenges which might come later. Next generation technology which not only streamlines the health care delivery process but brings the golden memories of health care back.

About the Author

Mr. Abhinav Shashank, Co-Founder & CEO at Innovaccer, is an expert in population health management and robust technologies. For the better part of the decade he has been working to revolutionize healthcare delivery with 25+ value-focused organization and making over 10 million lives better. He has also spoken at numerous healthcare conference on the role of HealthIT in modern healthcare. You can reach out to him at: abhinav.shashank@innovaccer.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavshashank/

Twitter: @abhinavshashank

The post Why is Population Health Management Important? appeared first on New Age Healthcare.

Whatever we do in the healthcare space, it is eventually meant for the greater good of patients, which is why today the aim of modern healthcare is shifting towards value-based reimbursement and with that the process is getting modified accordingly. Gradually, patient-centric care is becoming prevalent. The current standards require enhanced patient experience, and that comes with improved quality, coordinated care at a reduced cost.

CMS when releasing the fact sheet for Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program for the year 2016, said in a statement, “We now pay hospitals for inpatient acute care services based on the quality of care, not just the quantity of services provided.” Backing this statement was the fact that out of the four quality domains, patient experience of care bore 25% of the weight. This led to hospitals working earnestly towards enhancing the patient experience and utilizing the massive potential to qualify for the bonus and improve on current standards.

Why does Patient Experience Matter?

Patient experience is an essential component of the IHI Triple Aim, a schema for elevating the standards of providers’ performance:

1. Improving the patient experience of care.
2. Improving population health.
3. Reducing the per capita cost of healthcare.

Fortunately, health systems know that patient satisfaction isn’t just a tool for a performance bonus. Improving patient satisfaction is a way to identify gaps in care delivery and develop quality services. Also, according to a survey conducted by a health system found that out of 1,019 adults interviewed, 85% were dissatisfied with at least one aspect of their providers. Creating a patient-centric industry where experience and satisfaction of patients are overlooked is almost impossible!

Improving Patient Experience

A lot of researches have established that improving patient experience directly results in higher quality of care. Healthcare systems have realized the importance of the Triple Aim, and here’s how they can start working in this order on improving one of the fundamental aspects:

Patient Engagement a Priority

Patient engagement has been one of the most talked-about aspects of healthcare and unquestionably a way to improve the care experience. What we need to ensure is that the patient is willing to participate in the decision-making and the provider advocating this intervention. Even though healthcare providers are making efforts to improve patient engagement at their end, a survey revealed that only 34% of the patients are highly encouraged. Some effective methods patients found useful are:

• 59% of the surveyed people found increased physician-patient time vital.
• 54% of the patients favored being part of the decision-making.
• 36% promoted the growth of patient access to services.

Using Data Analytics

Data analytics have proven their worth in healthcare, and we have only scratched the surface of the immense sea of possibilities that can be realized using data analytics. When it comes to advancing patient experience, data analytics can be used in several ways:

• Gathering data and creating actionable follow-up plans for patients.
• Leveraging data analytics for accurate analysis of patients and reducing readmission rate.
• Data analysis can zero in on inefficiencies and medical errors and help reduce avoidable expenses.

Understanding the Patient

A lot has been done when it comes to understanding the patient and listening to them, and a lot more can be done. Establishing a relationship with the patient is paramount, and more than half of the patients interviewed believed that their relationship with their providers could be better, while 82% of them considered that empathetic doctors are crucial. Listening to patients’ problems, building a rapport with them and making follow-up plans would result in a stronger bond between physicians and patients.

Focusing on Physician Engagement

The merits of strong physician engagement are being realized gradually in the recent times, and there is no denying that prominent physician engagement works its way towards improving quality and enriching patient experience. Physician engagement creates an affinity between physicians with an inclusion of values and ethics, and the ultimate goal of improving patient care will be the driving force for them. Every time there is even one percent interviewed in physician engagement, the overall hospital HCAHPS rating increases by 0.33% and the chances of patients’ recommending the hospital rises by 0.25%!

Putting Technology to Use

Every small detail matters. For instance, Care Coordinators with simple contact details of patients can get in touch with them to find out their health status and plan care plan accordingly. One where it is made sure that patient has the means of transport for follow-up visits, medications, caretaker, and many necessities that contribute in delivering quality healthcare. When the patient changes the PCP, the information is transferred for continued care. There could be other relevant use cases to quality management, patient 360, and other PHM activities. In this day and age, technology can be harnessed in a million ways and can come in handy for perfecting patient experience. Today, we have mHealth to connect patients on the go, patient portals providing transparency and wearable technology equipped with real-time alerts. All we need is to tap this potential and the gaps in patient satisfaction will patch up.

Patient Experience is not just a metric

Improving patient experience is a task for some, an opportunity for many. In the shift towards value-based care, patient experience is not just another metric mentioned by the CMS that hospitals need to report on. Patient satisfaction is more than a regulatory requirement that providers have to meet; it’s a way to identify gaps in caregiving, a way to improve the quality of services and more than anything, it is an indication of how well a health system is doing. Patient experience is not just about inpatient experience; it extends to post-episode care. The goals undertaken by providers influence patient experience, and a rich patient experience shapes health outcomes. Aiming for sound and wholesome patient experience is central to delivering value-based care.

About the Author

Mr. Abhinav Shashank, Co-Founder & CEO at Innovaccer, is an expert in population health management and robust technologies. For the better part of the decade he has been working to revolutionize healthcare delivery with 25+ value-focused organization and making over 10 million lives better. He has also spoken at numerous healthcare conference on the role of HealthIT in modern healthcare. You can reach out to him at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavshashank/

                                                       Twitter: @abhinavshashank

The post Patient Experience 101: The Future of Healthcare appeared first on New Age Healthcare.