Cerner, 3M team up for population health management integration
3M Health Information Systems and Cerner are partnering to integrate 3M's Patient-focused Episodes software with Cerner's HealtheIntent population health platform.
Officials said the tools together will enable providers to see the landscape of a given patient's conditions, rather than the usual focus on a single disease. Bharat Sutariya, MD, Cerner's chief medical officer for population health, added that 3M’s software builds on Cerner’s portfolio of population health management tools to help customers manage care and costs.
The companies also said they intend to enhance HealtheIntent to help providers to define an episode of care and analyze expected cost outlays.
[Also: 5 steps to a successful population health framework]
"An episode-based payment system that is designed around the patient is the next logical step in the evolution of healthcare payment systems," 3M Health Information Systems President JaeLynn Williams said. "By creating a defined time period, individual clinicians work as a unified team toward a single, clearly stated goal – to carry each patient across the episode finish line as efficiently as possible."
The Patient-focused Episodes Software defines more than 500 episodes of care: inpatient and outpatient, chronic and acute. By accounting for patients with complex health histories, the software can show risk-adjusted episodes where analytics might be deployed for better outcomes.
HealtheIntent's enterprise data warehouse, meanwhile, will support bundled payments, compare provider costs and provide classification such as diagnosis-related group, officials said. Providers can view data to help evaluate the effectiveness of clinical care, predict costs and refine treatments.
Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
