Industry-First Interview: Are Healthcare Leaders Ready to Trust the Cloud? One New Study Says Yes

At Covisint, we’re seeing payers asking, how do we connect with this real-time engagement with the provider and the patient? We call that the last mile. And the original disease management involved call centers at the plan; but now, you can get data in real time on both the analytics sides, but also, Mrs. Smith is leaving the hospital, and the hospital uses hospitalists, and so Dr. Jones in the community didn’t even know that Mrs. Smith was in the hospital. And what’s valuable to get into the community is the real-time sharing of information to the physician in the community, and both providers and payers want that. For the physicians, they’re trying to improve their star rating; and for the payer, they’re trying to reduce costs.

And this may be healthcare’s version of crowd-sourcing. In healthcare, there’s already a payment occurring for an office visit. So if the payer can end up getting key information to the provider at the time of the visit, whether after a hospital stay or for chronic care, then that visit is that much more valuable. So the value proposition might be, that physician knows that patient, and you may be able to tweak the medications to stop a hospital stay. Or, by talking with the patient while also having access to data, the physician may be able to find out that the patient has had a flu vaccination, but needs a mammogram. So the physician can improve their HEDIS or star scores. And the health plan can start to notify people or get in touch with people who need to be brought in. So the payer and provider are helping each other by sharing information back and forth.

What is your answer to healthcare IT leaders who still don’t trust the cloud because of the PHI data security issue?

In the early iterations of the cloud, there was a lack of security control. But in the newer versions, the CIO does have control over the data. And there are big enough companies in the cloud where the contractual relationships are such that they carry a business lever. A decade ago we saw it in the auto industry, and now see it in travel and other industries, and that is that you need trust that a competitor won’t get at your information, that it will be secure and safe, and that you can rely on it from a business perspective. Neutrality is an important element in that.

And it’s important that the CIO have control over it, but also that the CIO can get the value out of having the information available in the community, for the patient. You used to have to choose one or the other—security or availability—but now you don’t anymore, when everyone’s a sender or receiver. In some situations, we’re sending data as a source for an EMR, or a source for health information exchange; but we’re also receiving in the same way.

Given that the executives interviewed cited increasing operational efficiency, reducing unnecessary readmissions, and improving the management of chronic conditions, as their top operational priorities, what would your advice be for healthcare and healthcare IT leaders right now?

I think it is, start with what you have, and figure out who a trusted partner is in your community. If you’re a provider, it may be that you need reliable data from multiple payers, and that may require the cloud. Or maybe you’re hosting the information on Citrix. So wherever you can, use data standards in data communication. But it’s better to get a document that’s an electronic image to the point of care today, than perhaps waiting for all wiring and standards ready—it might be more important to get the information out to the provider today.

So watch for data standards and use them when you can, but get the data out in a trusted way as quickly as you can. And all of this will change, in terms of how you render it, in terms of the software and in terms of the devices you use, and how it all mixes and matches. Whatever you do, it’s got to get out into the community—the information does. And any information technology used has to be safe, trustworthy, and scalable. And now there are business and clinical reasons to do it.

What will happen in the next couple of years, with regard to the emerging new forms of healthcare reimbursement and organizations, and this topic?

I think that organizations will take on more risk, so that the coordination and organization of services will happen at a more local level, even as individual providers will still be paid primarily under fee-for-service. So we’ll see a shift from health plans to hospital organizations in terms of taking on risk, but still with some fee-for-service payment mixed in. The end result will be more local control, more sharing, and more distribution of information.