This year’s HIMSS conference theme is “Champions of Health Unite” — a fitting call to action for a year where healthcare has rallied around collaboration as essential to thriving in our new and rapidly changing landscape. It has been 10 years since the 2009 Stimulus Plan (ARRA) jump-started the conversion to electronic health records (EHR). We now have a healthcare sector almost entirely operating digitally, yet we still struggle to deliver a complete picture of a person’s relevant health information to care teams on demand.
Most, if not all, in the healthcare sector agree that delivering the right care, to the right person, at the right time in a way that improves outcomes, increases quality, and lowers cost is the right thing to do. But hitting the mark on each of those elements, whether under the banner of value-based care, population health management, precision medicine, or something else, requires information from multiple sources to be brought together in such a way that new and accurate insights can be gleaned in real time.
We’ve learned that simply amassing more information isn’t necessarily better. It doesn’t matter if the information comes from five sources — or 100. What matters is being able to produce the single insight that helps a provider construct a more effective treatment plan for her patient, or that helps the discharge planner order the walker that will prevent her patient from falling when he gets home, or that helps a pediatrician prescribe an alternative drug for his young patient to avoid an allergic reaction.
Our next evolution as a sector is about getting smarter. Smarter than we are today. Knitting together health information systems and data across the ecosystem in a way that reduces noise and amplifies signal. It’s the kind of approach that we’re taking at Manifest MedEx (MX) across the state of California for our 200+ participants and 11+ million patients, in partnership with InterSystems. Less than two years since launch, our participating providers have already demonstrated improvements in patient outcomes and reductions in avoidable readmissions through the use of MX data and services.
Ten years ago at HIMSS, it seemed like a massive undertaking to get the healthcare system off paper records and onto electronic systems. That future is now here, and we are turning our eyes toward a truly unified health information system. Progress is accelerating, and now is the time for health leaders to act. California is building momentum; we’re excited to talk with other state and national leaders at HIMSS about the progress all across the country.
Don’t miss Manifest MedEx’s Industry Solution Session,
“Unifying Provider and Payer Data to Propel Value-Based Care”on Thursday, February 14 at 8:30 AM in Room W208C during HIMSS19.
About the Author
Erica Galvez, Chief of Staff, Programs & Partnerships VP, Manifest MedEx
Erica is a recognized expert on health information exchange and interoperability. She most recently led the HIE work for Aledade, with ACOs spanning 15 states and accounting for more than $1.5B in annual health care spend. She led efforts that tripled the company’s hospital connectivity, and evolved the use of health information to reduce avoidable hospitalizations and emergency department encounters.
Prior to Aledade, she led the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC’s) Interoperability Portfolio. She also served as one of the directors of ONC’s State HIE Program and as program manager for AHIMA’s State-Level HIE Consensus Project. Erica came to the HIE space through years of healthcare quality and patient safety research at The Joint Commission. She holds a master’s from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Six Sigma yellow belt from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
