by Heather Landi | Nov 18, 2019 3:05pm
Limited
funding and lack of reimbursement from payers are the top hurdles to patient
engagement technologies, analytics and precision medicine, according to a
survey of chief information officers.
Healthcare
providers plan to ramp up investments in telemedicine, patient portals and data
aggregation capabilities but continue to struggle with how to fund these
investments, a survey report from KLAS Research
and the Center for Connected Medicine (CCM) found.
The
"Top of Mind for Top Health Systems 2019" survey from KLAS Research
and CCM surveyed 70 healthcare executives, including CIOs and IT
directors, from 65 health systems.
"Health
systems are moving toward a risk-based world where they will have a bigger
financial stake in better managing the health of their patients. Having access
to complete patient data and analyzing it, keeping patients engaged in their
health and delivering more effective treatments, are essential to managing
risk,” Pamela Peele, Ph.D., chief analytics officer of UPMC Health Plan and
UPMC Enterprises, said in a statement.
“Finding
the money to deploy these important technologies, while managing the other
financial pressures health systems face, is a challenge for all health care
providers,” said Peele, who is a member of the steering committee for the CCM,
which is jointly operated by GE Healthcare, Nokia and UPMC.
Here's
what CIOs and other executives had to say about technology to support the shift
to value-based care:
Patient engagement
Patient
portals and telemedicine are the technologies most often deployed in health
systems’ patient engagement efforts, with 82% of healthcare executives saying
the patient portal is the dominant technology for engaging with patients.
But
patient adoption of these tools is still low. Organizations report
that, on average, 35% of patients have adopted the technologies that are
available to them. Nearly half of executives (46%) said patients were the
biggest hurdle to increased adoption of patient engagement technologies.
Executives
also say lack of reimbursement is a major challenge. Telemedicine, in
particular, was called out as an area in which payer buy-in is lacking.
One
healthcare IT director explained, “The biggest barrier is reimbursement.
Everyone knows that it works very well, and the payers drive a lot of it, so we
look at it as if there are bundled payments. That works well, but obviously,
adoption rises when something is covered by insurance because people can
consider convenience and cost."
Despite
that, health systems are increasing their investment in patient engagement
technologies, with telemedicine (80%), patient portals (70%) and remote patient
monitoring (57%) cited as top investment areas.
Data analytics
Data
aggregation is a top priority as health systems attempt to shift to value-based
care, according to the report.
On
average, organizations report they are 71% of the way to complete clinical
integration and 61% of the way to full integration, which includes clinical
data as well as claims, financial and other data sources, the survey found.
These
data integration efforts are stymied by limited funding and resources,
according to nearly half (44%) of CIOs and other executives.
There
are technical barriers as well, such as poor data normalization (44%) and
lack of data standards (40%). Small healthcare organizations also reported
intentional data blocking as a barrier, the report said.
About
half of survey respondents blamed health IT vendors as the most common source
for data aggregation roadblocks.
According
to the report, one IT director said most usable data come from "systems we
have purchased from IT vendors, and it is a lack of standards and
interoperability between the vendors that cause most of the
problems."
"I
guess one could put payers on the list of responsible parties; part of the
issue comes from their end as well," the IT director said.
Precision medicine
According
to the survey, there is tremendous optimism in the potential of precision
medicine. However, reimbursement and generating a return on investment are
significant challenges, CIOs surveyed said.
Barriers
to entry are high, and, so far, adoption of precision medicine technology is
currently limited to relatively few organizations—only 12% of interviewed
health systems, mostly larger organizations, can be categorized as mature in
their precision medicine efforts, the report said.
On
average, those organizations have adopted three use cases, with oncology being
the most prevalent.
Getting
payers to reimburse precision medicine and earning a return on investment were
cited as the biggest hurdles. Currently, precision medicine is funded primarily
through fee-for-service or out-of-pocket payments.
But
many executives expect this to shift in a big way, along with
the industry’s shift to value-based care. Almost three-quarters of
respondents (73%) expect value-based payments to be the primary payment model
for precision medicine treatments in two years.
According
to the report, one healthcare CIO said, "I am optimistic that payers will
recognize the value of pharmacogenetic testing and increase coverage of that
testing. Payers should at least do that for certain disease states and medical
services."
No comments:
Post a Comment