HFMA Healthcare Innovation Summit

Patients as Partners: Leveraging Health IT in a Consumer-centric Era

Course: 131009 | CPE Credits: 1.0 | Level: Intermediate | Prerequisites: Introductory understanding of Health IT

Course Description: Patient engagement and consumer-centric healthcare through HIT is quickly becoming a key focus in healthcare reform as a means to improve overall health outcomes and reduce readmissions, while showing a strong return on investment. The integrated PHR has taken best practices related to connected health and patient self-management and shown significant clinical and financial results. Patient engagement and consumer-centric healthcare through health information technology is quickly becoming a key focus in healthcare reform as a means to improve overall health outcomes and reduce readmissions, while showing a strong return on investment (ROI). Personal Health Records (PHR) as a standalone system or tethered model has not shown these same results, but rather an integrated, patient centric PHR has taken best practices and learnings related to connected health and patient self-management and shown significant clinical and financial results.With the onset of Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2, patient engagement has taken a center stage and for good reason. The key is to leverage these requirements to enable patient engagement systems to meet multiple needs. ONC is leading the way in the consumer engagement space by focusing efforts on the 3-part aim, which strives to 1) increase consumer and patient Access to health information; 2) catalyze market innovation to allow consumers to take Action toward better health using health information; and 3) shift consumer and provider Attitudes in support of consumer engagement in health. There are a number of key initiatives above MU that are driving these aims. An example is the Automate Blue Button for America (ABBI) workgroup, which is part of the Standards and Interoperability Framework, is committed to leveraging and improving upon health IT to make it more viable for consumers to access data from a magnitude of health information systems.It is important to not only give consumers access to their personal health information, but also provide with tools and resources that change health behavior. Engaging patients and their care management team to collaboratively work together improves outcomes and reduces costs. As our healthcare delivery system moves from a fee-for-service model to an outcomes based model, access to personal health records through patient portals plays a key role in readmissions management, care transition management and chronic disease management.

Learning Objectives: After this session, the attendees should be able to:

1. Outline key federal and state initiatives that align with patient engagement
2. View key use cases and case studies related to patient engagement
3. Provide quantifiable data in support of ROI in patient engagement
4. Garner a better understanding of patient health technology utilization and statistics in the market place.

Target Audience: Health IT, Inpatient, Outpatient/Ambulatory, Home Health

Courtney Nicolato – Vice President, Healthcare Strategies, Get Real Health | Cortney M. Nicolato, CPHIT serves as VP of Healthcare Strategies for Get Real Health and is responsible for product design and marketing for Get Real’s award winning list of clients. Previous to this role, Ms. Nicolato served as Director of Quality & Health IT Business Development for the American Heart Association and its division, the American Stroke Association. In this role, Ms. Nicolato led the Association’s AHA’s positioning on PHRs. Ms. Nicolato is actively involved in the Health IT community. She holds the prestigious Certified Professional in Health Information Technology (CPHIT) designation, and has also served on the PHR Workgroup for the CCHIT and chaired CCHIT’s Cardiovascular Workgroup. She participates on the Center for Aging Services Technologies EHR workgroup as well as various work groups for HIMSS’ eConnecting with Consumers Committee.