Electronic health record kingpin Epic and insurance giant Humana have announced an agreement that will integrate technologies to enhance patient, provider and payer access to health information. Humana is the first national healthcare insurer to collaborate with Epic to bring together patients, providers and payers to forward value-based care, the companies said.

What happened?

Epic and Humana aim to advance interoperability to promote open communication and information transparency that will give patients and their practitioners integrated and real-time access to the patients’ medical history, health insights and treatment options, which, in turn, should enable cost reduction, improve quality and increase patient satisfaction, the companies contended.

“The nexus of these technologies will both improve the provider experience and patient access to care by empowering them to weigh evidence-based outcomes with patients’ individual medication cost and coverage,” said Alan Wheatley, president of Humana’s retail segment. “It’s estimated that roughly half of Humana Medicare Advantage members already see a doctor who uses Epic’s platform, so we are excited about the significant number of patients that will benefit from this partnership.”

Why it matters?

To enhance the prescriber’s experience, Humana will integrate its Real-Time Benefits Check tool, IntelligentRx, directly into Epic’s e-prescribing workflow, delivering real-time pharmacy data throughout its network.

“The integration of IntelligentRx’s decision-making platform with Epic’s product empowers physicians and their patients to make treatment decisions together, based on efficacy and cost transparency,” said Scott Greenwell, president of Humana Pharmacy Solutions. “When prescribers use IntelligentRx and they are presented with alternatives, we find that they select the more cost-effective treatment nearly 40 percent of the time.”

Integrating these technologies, the companies predicted, will improve the timeliness and accuracy of Humana-generated knowledge, ease administrative burden, and help providers make the best decisions for patients at the point of care through the delivery of timely, meaningful member insights. The model, the companies stated, should:

• Increase the breadth, quality and timeliness of data exchange to better track quality measures and improve the breadth of member insights.
• Reduce cost and improve the extent of specialty care by surfacing quality and cost information to providers as they make referral decisions at the point of care.
• Improve medication adherence by presenting medication alternatives with cost information to providers while they prescribe.
• Improve provider access to claims to support monitoring of value‐based arrangement performance.
• Reduce burden on providers and improve timeliness for prior authorization decisions.

On the record

“This transformative relationship brings together the provider, the payer and the patient in new ways so they’re all working from the same playbook,” said Alan Hutchison, vice president of population health at Epic. “The relationship is also about aligning information to reduce the administrative burden on providers and improve quality and transparency for patients.”

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com