Velocity Health Informatics Ready for #HFMA2017ANI
GUEST Hal Gilreath, Executive Vice President of Client Relations for Velocity Health Informatics
Background
In our last podcast, Lorraine Fernandes joined us because many Finance Executives are preparing to attend Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) Annual National Institute (ANI) Conference 2017 starting on June 25 in Orlando and we wanted Lorraine to help us frame some of the key issues for Healthcare Finance Executives.
In this Q&A post, Hal Gilreath describes how Velocity Health Informatics is assisting their clients in tacking the key issues described by Lorraine.
Interview
Hal, Lorraine discussed increased consumerism in healthcare with us. How can Velocity help healthcare providers deal with increased healthcare consumerism?
Consumerism will increase the focus on both cultural and system accountability. It also means both providers and payers will need to have a comprehensive and full picture of a patient’s health and encounters. By that, I mean the expectations of a consumer are such that people expect real time or advanced communications, accurate billings, and high quality and timely care. I expect consumers will continue to demand higher levels of service and do meet these demands it’s essential providers have accurate records and high-quality data. This also translates to a similar view provided to the patient. As transparency increases patients will have more options to select providers, negotiate rates and assess With that in mind the more data and the higher level of quality of that data will become paramount attributes. Velocity can start with an assessment of a provider’s data and record governance and identify areas where interoperability, data quality programs and record remediation can improve both a provider’s financials but also its levels of service and its accountability to consumers.
How can Velocity help providers/ACOs be prepare for value-based care, especially with respect to patient engagement?
I believe the focus here is on presenting timely and accurate information to a patient.
Two aspects: culture and accountability – the 2016 eHealth Initiative survey indicated 95% of organizations are not ready for VBC/ACO structures and 85% of the solutions do not meet current needs. I don’t believe this is technology as much as setting the right culture, objectives and accountability. Think about how frustrating it is when if you’re a patient your schedule is wrong, they have the incorrect information or you get billed for the wrong services. If a provider doesn’t have its records and data in order, and be able to source the information quickly through interoperability services, patient engagement will suffer. ACOs and VBC initiatives increase the complexity of patient engagement because a provider is engaging a patient across a community instead of a campus or facility. Velocity helps clients improve their data and records environments and takes the heavy lift out of the integration efforts.
We also discussed legislation alphabet soup with Lorraine, MACRA/MIPS/etc., How can Velocity help providers react to all the current legislation?
This is similar to the previous question in that MACRA/MIPS…. Are all driving different behaviors and accountabilities. The legislation here is tied directly to levels of reimbursement. Not being able to produce timely and accurate reports to garner the appropriate reimbursements is typically tied to underlying issues with data quality, interoperability or the ability to access data from multiple sites, and unmet record remediation. These are Velocity’s core offerings and we support clients that need to address these foundational components of quality programs.
I’ve covered the challenge of patient matching and identification quite a bit on the Velocity Interoperability Podcast, yet my understanding is that providers are slow to adopt solutions to first clean their data and then to ensure that they can clearly identify each patient. Why do you believe providers are not aggressively pursuing these solutions from companies like Velocity?
Many organizations have focused on meeting MU, MU2, PQRS, ACO…. Requirements. Typically, this has required an extensive, and costly EMR implementation. Yet, they find the EMR may not have all the data they need, it’s difficult to access and share the data in proprietary silos, and this obfuscates their patient matching and identity issues. Also, it’s somewhat a challenge to admit that there are foundational components which need refinement after a major implementation or upgrade. In comparison to the costs of an EMR, conducting a sample analysis of their record matching and data quality is a highly valuable investment. Every record fixed provides a 100-fold return. However, it’s many times not highly visible as the financial losses are distributed across an entire workflow and get lost in the shuffle.
What other key issues are top-of-mind for healthcare finance executives as we near the ANI conference?
Data quality, interoperability and accurate patient identity are cornerstones of a well run and financially successful organization. This isn’t a domain for just the CIO and IT. Data and records are also the domain of the CFO and Finance/Accounting. If you want to make a direct impact on your top line and bottom line make an investment to gauge how you’re doing with data quality, record governance and management and patient identity.
Will you be going to ANI? If so, how can people contact you to connect at ANI?
Yes, I’m looking forward to attending. Anyone can reach me at hgilreath@velocityhii.com or 904-338-4988.
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About Velocity
Velocity Health Informatics Inc., previously Health eGRC, was founded in 2011. We are a woman-owned company headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. Our solutions and services are designed to meet the needs of Accountable Care Organizations, Hospital Systems, Health Information Organizations and Insurers. Velocity is one of the few firms that provides medical record remediation and data integration/data quality AS-A-Service offerings for healthcare providers that are overwhelmed with the amount of medical record duplicates and errors and the issues those errors create up and down stream in their data integration.
About Hal Gilreath
Hal Gilreath is a partner at Velocity Health Informatics where he has responsibility for business development, partner relationships, marketing and client services. He leads Velocity’s outbound communications and works with healthcare organizations’ leadership and partners to solve complex clinical and business issues. His focus is to deliver high value services with a focus on improving patient care, quality and costs through patient record remediation, data quality and integration. His operational experience includes leading internal and external organizations ranging from small strategy teams to large-scale operations and implementations. Velocity services are focused on delivering high quality data and accurate records to support new care models and strategies, interoperability, physician integration, optimization through healthcare analytics, and community care model and population health integration.
Hal was formerly the Vice President and Executive Team Member at Sandlot Solutions where he led the largest team at Sandlot to deploy HIE, analytics and notification tools to clients. Prior to Sandlot Hal was the Americas Cisco Healthcare Consulting Practice where his team delivered strategic consulting engagements focused on extending care through telehealth, new business model creation and improving the patient experience. Prior to this role he was a healthcare lead for Cisco Healthcare Solutions where he improved the delivery of care through innovative solutions. Hal was formerly an executive at Winn-Dixie and a healthcare consulting practice leader at TSC PACS and digital imaging practice, PwC eHealth practice, and with the First Consulting Group Advanced Technology Services practice. Hal is a former Naval Officer where he flew EA-3B’s for the U.S. Navy as a mission commander, and was a program manager for Naval Aviation training programs. He has published articles in leading healthcare and technology journals, and spoken at national healthcare industry meetings.
Hal holds a B.S. in Operations Research/General Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy; and a M.S. in Health Systems/Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech.
Join the Conversation
Please jump in and participate as your input will only improve our chances of success. The fine folks at Velocity are interested in exploring and improving our current states of medical record data quality and interoperability and this post is the first of many posts and (coming soon) podcasts reporting on current status and solutions. PLEASE bookmark this site and provide your input and feedback on a regular basis!
The Velocity Interoperability Blog and Velocity Interoperability Podcast are sponsored by Velocity Health Informatics. Velocity provides both data quality and data integration as a service offerings to ensure that healthcare providers access the correct patient record with the right data for each patient they serve.
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