Hartford-based health insurance vendor, Aetna is teaming with Banner Health Network (Phoenix) to include full technology support for population health management and patient services for more than 200,000 patients. There were will be support for the 50,000 Medicare fee-for-service patients covered under the Pioneer ACO shared savings program and members in Aetna’s ACO relationship with Banner Health Network.

Banner, a patient care and business partnership between Arizona Integrated Physicians, the Banner Medical Group, the Banner Physician Hospital Organization and Banner Health, will see an implemented broad “technology stack” and care management services across its enterprise. This will include health information exchange (HIE) technology from Medicity, point-of-care clinical decision support services from Active Health Management, and smartphone and online appointment setting and pre-registration services for patients through iTriage.

“In order to succeed in the delivery of high quality, high experience, affordable care, we must integrate clinical activities across the patient’s continuum of care. This requires data sharing among our providers, and the workflow integration that can result,” Dr. Tricia Nguyen, chief medical officer for Banner Health Network. “Actionable data is the currency for change in healthcare.”

More than 2,600 Banner-affiliated physicians in the Phoenix metro area are part of the Banner Health Network. In December 2011, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center announced it had selected the Banner Health Network as one of 32 organizations participating in the new Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) initiative.