MDdatacor, Inc., a provider of healthcare quality management technology for insurers and healthcare providers, announced today at America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) 2009 Institute in San Diego the launch of MDinsight, a technology solution designed to support the implementation of a patient-centered medical home model of care delivery in the United States.
A medical home is a team approach to providing healthcare, where a primary care physician leads a team of healthcare professionals who collectively take responsibility for the continuous care of a patient. This includes acute care, chronic care, preventive services and end-of-life care.
"MDinsight puts disease prevention and management back where it belongs - in the hands of the physician - by extrapolating clinical data and patient information from a physician's records and packaging it in a way that helps physicians identify clinical opportunities to serve their patients," said Tim Roche, president and chief executive officer of MDdatacor.
MDinsight analyzes patient clinical data against evidence-based guidelines, indicating to a physician all of the patients in their practice with chronic conditions who are in need of a test, or who do not have their condition in control based on test results. The reports also show which patients are in need of preventative wellness, such as an annual check-up, immunizations, colonoscopy or mammogram. MDinsight provides proactive patient outreach to notify those patients who need to schedule a procedure or office visit.
Approximately 750,000 physicians currently care for a U.S. population of about 305 million patients. The majority of these physicians practice in groups of five physicians or less and are essentially small businesses without the resources and incentives to innovate. MDinsight provides an affordable, easy to use solution that does not require physicians to change their workflow.
MDinsight helps connect healthcare providers in a medical home and facilitate the coordination of care through the sharing of clinical data to help ensure patients get the right care at the right time. In addition, MDinsight allows clinicians to collectively document and track the quality of care a single patient receives, which helps alert the medical home to opportunities to proactively manage a patient's health.
"A medical home model that combines information technology and physician incentives based on the quality of care rather than the quantity can improve care and lower health care costs," said Dr. David Hanekom, medical director of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota (BCBSND). Dr. Hanekom is leading the BCBSND effort to deploy MDinsight to every physician in North Dakota as part of the first statewide medical home model in the country.
A Doctor's Office of Quality Information Technology (DOQ-IT) study showed that more than 70 percent of patients do not receive recommended preventative care. According to the 2005 Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) study, more than 50 percent of chronic disease patients do not receive follow-up care indicated by evidence-based guidelines.
According to John Watts, MDdatacor executive chairman and former executive leader at WellPoint - the largest health insurer in the United States - health insurers and disease management companies have struggled to drive meaningful improvement in patient care and reduce healthcare costs without full physician engagement.
"Claims data was designed for billing purposes, so attempting to use this data to improve patient care has significant limitations including lack of timeliness and accuracy. As a result, physicians do not find claims-based performance data reliable or credible," said Watts. "MDdatacor is the first and only U.S. healthcare information technology company to partner with both insurers and physicians to create a patient-centered medical home that is accessible and accountable for patient outcomes, improves the quality and reliability of care, and reduces healthcare costs through the use of actionable clinical information."
A recent study estimated that if every American had a medical home, healthcare costs would likely decrease by 5.6 percent, resulting in national savings of $67 billion dollars per year, with an improvement in the quality of the healthcare provided. In fact, the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 provided funds for a Medicare Medical Home Demonstration Project to be launched in 2010.
MDinsight was developed on the patented and interoperable CareInformatix(TM) platform, which automates the collection, analysis and sharing of clinical data from physician practices' existing sources, including transcription, electronic medical record (EMR), practice management, lab, registry and scheduling systems, without costly interfaces. Implementation time is only four to six weeks, allowing practices to be up and running quickly.
Through the web-based MDinsight system, physicians access real-time reports that identify patients whose current treatment does not meet clinical guidelines, enabling physicians to provide appropriate, evidence-based medical care to patients in a cost-effective manner.
"MDinsight has successfully demonstrated that providers using disparate systems can securely connect and exchange health information in order to enhance the quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness of patient healthcare," said Roche. "The keys to improved patient outcomes are clinician access to comprehensive, actionable clinical data, and sharing that data across healthcare provider settings."
