The 2023 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition kicks off in Chicago on Monday, and among all the many other health and tech news that will be made there, HIMSS will officially debut its newest maturity model, designed to focus on IT innovation in the non-acute spaces where most care is delivered.

WHY IT MATTERS
The Community Care Outcomes Maturity Model, or C-COMM, from HIMSS Analytics is meant to help healthcare organizations track the digital maturity of care delivered across community-based environments.

The model is a means to assess – among other modalities – primary care, telehealth and virtual care delivery, organizations specializing in maternal and child wellness, and mental and behavioral health. C-COMM aims to give a strategic roadmap to help those disparate organizations create more person-centered care plans and build out a broader ecosystem for holistic care across patients' lifespan.

The new model is a modernized version of HIMSS Analytics' Outpatient Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model, which tracks IT maturity for ambulatory care and outpatient clinics.

In its focus on community care for all non-acute care delivery environments C-COMM is focused on digital health imperatives such as wellness, illness prevention, home-based chronic disease management, and preventing hospitalizations and readmissions.

The model's main goals are to help community healthcare organizations:

• Measure value as they adopt digital tools to expand care capabilities, and track how data is used to monitor and manage performance and outcomes.

• Advance personalized care delivery while strengthening access, enabling wider choice of care delivery, building health literacy and helping enhance communication among providers and patients.

• Improve and enhance efficiency, productivity and management of resource utilization, channeling analytics toward better outcomes.

• Build data governance to help organizations build functionality and communication across disparate care teams.

• Achieve goals for process efficiencies, resource allocation, outcomes improvement and population management with real-time data.

THE LARGER TREND
HIMSS notes that the C-COMM model is especially useful as providers of all shapes and sizes see their workforces and financial resources stretched thin – helping them build strategies to optimize efficiency, productivity and efficacy of data-driven decision support.

It's the newest of HIMSS' longstanding suite of analytics analytics maturity models – which have been helping healthcare organizations around the world build and assess their technology maturity and care delivery capabilities since the EMR Adoption Model was first created in 2005.

At HIMSS23 in Chicago this week, Dr. Rohini Omkar Prasad, senior digital health advisor for analytics at HIMSS APAC, will offer an education session focused on the new Community: Community Care Outcomes Maturity Model. It's scheduled for Tuesday, April 18, from 10:15- 11:30 a.m. CT in North Building, Level 3, Hall B of McCormick Place.

Healthcare organizations interested in the C-COMM maturity model can also email analytics@himss.org for more information.

ON THE RECORD
"The majority of the world's population seek their health services outside the traditional hospital setting," said Toni Laracuente, HIMSS senior vice president and global head of analytics, in a statement.

"C-COMM is an important addition to the HIMSS Analytics suite of digital transformation maturity models, and a critical success factor for health systems to provide consumer friendly, convenient, digitally connected access to healthcare services, with improved patient engagement and experience, at home or in our communities," she said – adding that the model also helps improve "health equity for vulnerable populations and supports the HIMSS vision, to realize the full potential of every human, everywhere."

Mike Miliard is executive editor of Healthcare IT News
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.

Ferric Fang, Ning Rosenthal and Sarah Warner will offer more detail at the HIMSS23 session "The Power of Real-World Data in Driving Healthcare Decision-Making." It is scheduled for Tuesday, April 18, at 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. CT at the South Building, Level 5, room S503.