Revenue Cycle

With large integrated delivery networks scooping up physician practices and pressuring vendors to integrate different pieces of infrastructure, expect changes coming before too long.

With a proverbial flip of the switch at three locations in Florida and Arizona, Mayo Clinic has completed its $1.5 billion Epic electronic health record implementation, linking all Mayo sites on an integrated EHR and revenue cycle management system. WHY IT MATTERS The Mayo Clinic rollout, called the Plummer Project, in honor of Henry Plummer, MD, who developed a patient-centered health record at Mayo in 1907, is one of the largest, most complex and most expensive Epic implementations ever. First announced in early 2015, the initiative, which sought to replace the health system's existing Cerner and GE systems, had been under consideration for years, said Mayo Clinic CIO Cris Ross. "We really believe that an integrated EHR, across all of our organizations, can help us with that core mission of meeting patients' needs," he told Healthcare IT News at the time. Ross predicted then that rollout would take "about four years to complete." Given that the first two-dozen sites went live in Juy 2017, it's coming in ahead of schedule. There were several milestones along the way, notably go-lives at Mayo Clinic Health System in in November 2017 and Mayo Clinic in Rochester this past May. All told, the project depended on the expertise of nearly 500 IT staff. Now, some 52,000 Mayo employees are using Epic across 90 hospitals and clinics in the Minnesota, Florida and Arizona. "The project is highly complex due to the number of specialties and subspecialties involved," said Ross in another interview earlier this year. "We are not only focused on building and delivering a converged technical solution. We are also invested in the people side of change to support them in adopting, utilizing, and becoming proficient in the Epic system. This is being accomplished through a comprehensive change management strategy." WHAT IS THE TREND Mayo Clinic says the complexity and expense of the project were worthwhile investment for a single unified system that connects patients and providers across the health system, enabling easier access to clinical and billing information regardless of location. More and more, large U.S. health systems such as Mayo are gravitating toward either Epic and Cerner, and the same trend is now also playing out overseas. Other major Epic deals this year include Chicago-based Advocate Health Care and Trinity Health in Michigan. ON THE RECORD "Having one integrated system builds on our core mission of putting the needs of patients first,” says Steve Peters, MD, co-chair of the Plummer Project, in a statement. "This will enable us to enhance services, accelerate innovation and provide better care." "The commitment and expertise of outstanding Mayo staff, Epic colleagues and implementation partners brought us to this day," added co-chair Richard Gray, MD. "We envision even greater collaboration among experts in delivering the patient care, research and education that are hallmarks of Mayo." Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

Whether developing new digital tools, making strategic investments or partnering with tech startups, hospitals have plenty of ways to innovate.

Post-surgical readmissions were halved at the health system, HIMSS says, driven by EHR optimization and decision support tools – it's also helped combat potential opioid dependency.

Change Healthcare on Tuesday said that its blockchain-enabled Intelligent Healthcare Network will be available on Amazon Web Services. Change’s network enables blockchain technologies for more secure and efficient financial transactions throughout the claims process. Hospitals and health insurance companies can use the cloud service to track the status of claims submissions and remittances. They will benefit from having an immutable, auditable and accessible record, as well as reduced administrative costs and near real-time claim adjudication, Change said. This takes to the next level January’s s announcement that Change’s  intelligent healthcare network is now blockchain enabled. The intelligent healthcare network is now being paired with a cloud-based network built on Amazon Web Services. "AWS's flexibility, scalability, and reliability makes them an ideal partner to extend our connectivity to the cloud and offer next-generation technologies, such as blockchain, to facilitate and speed payer-provider information exchange,” said Kris Joshi, EVP and president of Network Solutions for Change Healthcare. “Moving forward, we will enlist the expertise and technologies of other players in the healthcare space to extend the availability, functionality, and value of this network." Through its blockchain, the intelligent healthcare network can generate nearly 50 million milestone blockchain transactions per day at an average rate of 550 transactions per second, Change said. The network reaches nearly all government and commercial payers, more than 5,500 hospitals, 800,000 physicians, and 60,000 pharmacies. It handles approximately one of every five patient records in the U.S., and processes 12 billion healthcare transactions and $2 trillion in claims annually. AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies and governments, on a paid subscription basis. Twitter: @SusanJMorse Email the writer: susan.morse@himssmedia.com

When its EHR vendor wasn’t going to be ready until 2020, the IT team took matters into its own hands in a low-budget open source project that is already paying off.

The pregnancy app, developed in-house with some help, allowed the hospital to improve its OB-maternity HCAHPS by 68 percent – and cut printing costs for paper handouts by half.

KLAS assesses regional preferences across one of the most dynamic and competitive health IT markets in the world.

The technology is "getting closer to its breakout moment," says Deloitte, whose new survey finds healthcare organizations seeing "disruption" on the horizon and preparing to spend accordingly.

Among the lesser-known benefits of telehealth are its abilities to help hospitals strengthen a provider’s billing and payment collections.