Monthly Archives: May 2016

Time to Value in Population Health


Post by Vicki Harter, BA, RRT


Vice President, Care Transformation

The stakes are high when it comes to population health as improved patient outcomes and long-term financial success are on the table. By now, most providers recognize the need to evolve. They must participate in new value-based programs, collaborate with other providers, and tailor workflows to support the changes. Implementing these changes is not easy! It takes significant amounts of time and resources from across the organization. When it comes to acquiring health IT tools to support population health, it often takes providers 9-12 months to evaluate the myriad of available solutions. I don’t blame providers for wanting immediate results after spending so much time investigating population health tools.

One of the key reasons why Caradigm formed its Care Transformation Team is to help customers achieve fast time to value following the acquisition of solutions. Our team serves as a sounding board for our customers who are making the shift to value-based care. We find that some organizations have been engaging in population health initiatives for years and are more mature in their processes while others can benefit from additional support. We tailor our approach to each customer’s strategic vision because it’s not one size fits all. The uniqueness of each organization has to be respected as we seek to identify common best practices and turn them into consistent processes.

I believe that all organizations should seek quick wins soon after acquiring population health technology. They are critical to building positive momentum for workflow transformation. The following are a few suggestions to consider when trying to achieve fast time to value in population health.

Plan early to achieve early success – establishing metrics and what quick wins look like prior to technology implementation provides a huge leg up in achieving them. Our team often collaborates with providers before contract signing to help clarify goals and expectations, and then align technology to them.

Define top value propositions – in addition to meeting specific metrics, population health tools can also deliver other types of value to end user clinicians. For example, the reduction of inefficiency or frustrating pain points for clinicians brings tremendous value to organizations and can be realized immediately. It’s important to document what the pain points and value propositions are in order to recognize that value.

Consider starting with care management – care management tools offer one of the quickest paths to value in population health because they can help remove numerous workflow inefficiencies that are impeding providers today. These can be items like having to hunt for data from multiple sources, having to manually generate care plans, or even being unaware when a patient is admitted to the ED. Care management solutions also give providers flexibility in where to start as they can begin by improving how they manage patients in a particular program, by disease category, or by focusing on a particular area of care management such as improving transitions of care.

While the road to population health can be long, organizations can achieve significant victories along the way. In fact, achieving those smaller wins should be celebrated as care transformation takes many small steps in the right direction. If you’d like to discuss how Caradigm can help you achieve quick time to value in population health, then please reach out to us here.

Healthcare’s Cybersecurity Mandate


Post by Mike Willingham


Vice President of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs, Caradigm

The mandate for healthcare information security is clear. Our industry has to raise the bar. We are reminded of this by the constant stream of breaches affecting healthcare providers such as the recent incidents impacting 21st Century Oncology and Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. Industry reports like this one from the Ponemon Institute state that healthcare organizations face cyberattacks every month and are still struggling to find effective strategies to keep systems secure.

One of the core vulnerabilities facing healthcare is identity and access risk as that most healthcare organizations have vulnerabilities, but don’t realize their security strategies are insufficient. With frequent industry consolidation and the emergence of population health, information security is becoming increasingly more challenging to manage. Data is now being shared from a multitude of applications with both employed and non-employed physicians. Managing this risk is further complicated because it has multiple layers. You have to consider elevated privileges, remote and mobile access, multi-factor authentication, and balance these concerns with providing efficient access. While single-sign on (SSO) tools are often looked upon as the first line of defense in controlling identity and access risk, providers need additional capabilities because the threat landscape has evolved. Providers need to assume that insiders and outsiders with malicious intent are attempting to gain unauthorized access.

In order to reduce this risk, providers need greater visibility so that they can be more diligent. This entails a major shift in philosophy to a more proactive strategy that is constantly managing credentials and access rather than just reacting. The key to succeeding with this approach is to leverage automation. With the exploding number of applications and clinicians that must be managed, security teams must use tools that can automate manual security related processes. Here are a few examples of how automation can help manage risk:

  • Provisioning and de-provisioning processes, which provides consistency in the process, saves IT many hours of work and prevents errors
  • User, entitlements and behavior data can be brought together in a single view so you have all the information you need to take action
  • A governance, risk and compliance (GRC) dashboard can be set up with analytics to monitor and proactively manage risk efficiently (e.g. an orphaned accounts report)
  • Real-time alerting can identify a potential incident as it happens to minimize damage
  • Remediation can be simplified so that access can be removed or suspended in just a couple of clicks

Given the increased threats we face, healthcare needs to change its approach to security and privacy. Ultimately, the key is greater due diligence, day in and day out. If we use tools that help us accomplish this, then we give ourselves the best chance to win this battle. For additional information security best practices, you can download FierceHealth IT’s special report: Data Security in the Information-Sharing Age. You can also reach out to us here if you would like more information about Caradigm’s solutions that can help.