What are the key issues confronting healthcare today?

There are macro trends affecting the entire industry ― consumerism, the continuing march toward value, providers creating health plans and health plans becoming providers ― but as a systems integrator, I’ll focus on three pressing issues specific to healthcare IT.

Silos: Simply installing myriad applications driving silos of functionality ― the approach of the past 15 years ― will not support a provider’s movement to value. The market needs industrialized, solutions of scale that modernize care coordination across the silos. Mobile solutions like an iPhone app to look up the cost of a service, a patient portal to schedule an exam, a Fitbit-like tracker to monitor vitals ― these pile up, but who’s integrating them into a single platform that provides a holistic view of a patient? These innovations may be exciting, potentially revolutionary, but nothing connects them. Increasingly, you’ll see the importance of world-class systems integration that extends beyond the acute care hospital and really spans home-to-home care management.

Cybersecurity: The healthcare industry is under constant attack. But the systems architecture in most places cannot resist the advanced methods that we, as a government-grade systems integrator, see around the world. There should be meaningful shifts in the way cybersecurity is prioritized, dealt with and delivered. This must go beyond packet and log inspection, beyond security operations center services, and especially beyond just paying fines and buying insurance. None of these protects patients.

Enterprise IT transformation: There are 5,000 hospitals in the United States and nearly that many data centers (or more if you consider their redundant sites). This makes no sense ― no other industry in our country looks like that. There are lower-cost, higher-reliability ways to build and maintain IT infrastructure. So, we anticipate changes here.

How is Leidos advancing the next generation of care management?

Leidos is a unique company providing services to the Department of Defense, National Security Agency and many other agencies. We develop systems that allow them to instantly gather information from disparate sources and translate it into actionable information for planning and executing missions.  In military jargon, that is known as creating command and control environments — enabling teams to coordinate and evaluate their work from start to finish.

We carry that approach into healthcare. Leidos has operated nurse advice lines for DoD. We develop solutions for behavioral health, applying 30 years of expertise to address adolescent substance abuse and prevent suicide and serious harm with real, science-based, measurable interventions. We help the VA ensure that its service members receive the benefits they’ve earned. And we work with commercial healthcare providers to coordinate patients across the full continuum of care.

Can you provide measurable results of that commercial work?

We’re seeing real improvements in clinical, operational and financial results in our partnership with a South Florida hospital system for home-to-home total joint replacement. We’ve integrated across many different systems, creating the same command and control environment that we do in complex government systems of very large scale. By combining input from physicians with branching workflow logic, we’re able to do the things in the broad care continuum, from home to home, that assure quality care delivery and provide analytics that inform cost management.

As a result, in this year we’ve seen about a 15 percent reduction in the total cost of care, a 33 percent decline in discharge to skilled nursing facilities, a 72 percent decline in discharge to home health, a 78 percent decline in discharge to rehab, and a 50 percent increase in discharge to home with no additional services. The patients are really better and healthier. So now we’re working with this health system to expand this across 54 other disease conditions.

Do integrated enterprise systems lead to integrated care?

Fundamentally, integration is both technical and process: data ingestion, analytics and workflow management. We start with physician-developed care plans that encompass the longitudinal care patients experience ― care that takes place both inside and outside the hospital.  Then we create an informed environment that transcends the many independent systems that “touch” the patient and provide actionable information.   

What does Leidos do?

We do the government-grade, hard and complex systems integration that health systems need today and often don’t get. Leidos offers the full scope and capabilities of a $10 billion thick systems integrator: enterprise IT, cybersecurity, and command-and-control. We’re capable on all fronts.

"Increasingly, you’ll see the importance of world-class systems integration that extends beyond the acute care hospital and really spans home-to-home care management.”

- JONATHAN SCHOLL, LEIDOS

About Leidos

Leidos is a Fortune 500® science and technology solutions and services leader working to solve the world’s toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, civil, and health markets. The company’s 32,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $7.04 billion for the fiscal year ended December 30, 2016. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com