Tag Archives: Aetna

ACO Here, ACO There, ACO, ACO Everywhere & Vendor Response

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In less than two years we have gone from Accountable Care Organization (ACO) as a concept, to ACO as a new model of care delivery. With the January announcement that there were 106 more added to the Medicare ACO program, we now have 254 ACOs nationwide. David Muhlestein of Leavitt Partners has done some of his own research and puts the total number of ACO-like entities at over 400. And let’s not forget that commercial insurers are putting forth their own contracts with providers to set-up similar accountable delivery systems where there is some element of gain and risk sharing with providers.

Now it is one thing to say you have signed on to become an ACO and quite another to actually execute on the contract. Among the numerous challenges that an ACO model presents, is the need for more sophisticated IT systems that will support distributed care management across a diverse care team that extends from the primary care physician, to the specialists, to the care manager, the patient and others. EHRs today will simply not get you there.

Today, there is no such out of the box solution from any one vendor that will enable an ACO model. But there are several vendors positioning themselves to be that one stop shop to enable your ACO strategy.

Following are some vignettes of several vendors looking to enable an ACO strategy and what they have on offer. (Note: This is our proverbial toe-in-the-water as we’ll be doing a comprehensive report on this market later this year)

Aetna: A commercial payer, Aetna is looking for new high-growth revenue opportunities and has targeted healthcare IT. Shortly after acquiring leading HIE vendor Medicity, and soon after leading mHealth App iTriage the company announced its ACO-enablement suite that combines the two above with analytics/managed care solution Active Health.
Strengths: Strong HIE brand, good consumer/patient engagement tools
Weakness: Predictive analytics and care management tools are not as competitive

CareEvolution: A privately owned HIE targeting the private, enterprise market, the company has built its own analytics engine, Galileo. Galileo provides deep dive capabilities into clinical, operational and claims data contained within a given network of providers.
Strengths: State of art HIE solution, good analytics capabilities
Weaknesses: Consumer/patient engagement tools are almost non-existent, low recognition in market

Cerner: Cerner’s HealtheIntent is part of the company’s broader strategy to move beyond being an IT company to becoming a health company. Like most EHR companies, ability to move as fast as market requirements is a challenge.
Strengths: Leading EHR, strong brand, leading visionary among EHR companies, has a good HIE solution, has broad suite of consumer engagement tools
Weaknesses: Analytics is lagging, resources to respond quickly is a challenge, distributed care management tools still work in progress

Epic: Company has one objective, rule all and do so through a highly proprietary and closed model. With Epic Everywhere, their HIE solution for Epic sites, company is able to provide exchange across entities as long as they are using Epic. Recently signed deal with Surescripts to allow exchange with other EHRs. Epic’s MyChart is the leading patient portal in the market.
Strengths: Growing dominance in market, solution suite is tightly integrated from ambulatory to acute care settings, patient portal is widely adopted
Weaknesses: Epic continues to follow a dated model of highly controlled, closed system that while providing high integrity, will ultimately yield a lumbering dinosaur – think Wang circa 1983

RelayHealth: Part of McKesson, RelayHealth has always been a catchall for various acquisitions that McKesson could not find an appropriate home for. A major reorg occurred a couple of weeks ago that will reposition RelayHealth as McKesson’s ACO-enablement suite.
Strengths: Strong consumer/patient engagement tools, a leading HIE solution in the enterprise market and with the reorg, the addition of new assets including the recently acquired analytics solution, MedVentive
Weaknesses: Still does not have a good story to tell around distributed care management, how MedVentive will be folded in remains to be seen.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of those HIT companies looking to offer an ACO-enablement solution suite, but simply meant to provide some perspective on what is currently on offer in the market.

As we prepare to head to HIMSS a week from Saturday, on the top of our list of things we wish to learn more about is exactly how companies such as those listed above and others not listed are meeting the current and future needs of the 400+ ACOs across the country and more importantly, how they intend to become the leaders in this rapidly developing field.

Thanks to KramesStayWell.com for the image

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At the Intersection of Obesity and HIT

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We Americans are on a very terrifying path, health-wise, based on the latest obesity projections from RWJF.

Medical “innovations” around the obesity epidemic are unsettling, to say the least. Most recently, Dean Kamen (of Segway fame) filed a patent for a self-serve Stomach-Pumping Machine.

Disturbing medical devices aside, what does the obesity crisis mean to healthcare IT (HIT)?  Yes, increasing obesity rates means more metabolic syndrome, more intervention, more biometric data,more data stored in EHRs, more HIE to share that data, more clinical analytics and care coordination software, …

Does this sound interesting to you?  In my research I am more focused on how technological innovation can function as a solution to the obesity crisis. First let’s consider the payers — the large, innovative ones who continue to rally for behavior change.

Payer-Sponsored Wellness & Patient Engagement Soldier On

Payer-sponsored behavior change programs have never sustained results in the long term, but this doesn’t stop the early adopters from soldiering on.   For our 2012 Payer Benchmark Report, we profiled several large, innovative payers working to engage their members and the public through low-cost consumer technologies.

Some interesting new developments in this space include:

  • Aetna is looking to make running on a treadmill bearable. Its new ‘Passage’ app (storing data in CarePass), promises to make exercisers feel as if they are travelling within a city of their choosing.
  • Cigna has just released a ‘Healthy Living App Pack’, bundling the extremely popular FoodEducate app with 3 less-popular ones.  (Cigna didn’t develop FoodEducate, but licensed it from founder Hemi Weingarten).
  • Humana has begun offering the HumanaVitality rewards system to a group of Medicare Advantage members. Let’s hope that seniors will take more kindly to this program than to HumanaVille, Humana’s failed attempt at creating an online senior health education community.

Consumer Health Companies Need to Move Beyond Fanatics

If payer apps can’t motivate widespread weight loss, then maybe the consumer space can? Consumer companies are currently busy developing software and testing out motivational models on the fly.  This is not exactly the scientific method but it works for small agile environments…and is definitely something that large payers are less adept at.

There is a belief among many of the quantified-self set that just the act of presenting health data to the consumer affects behavior change.  I seriously doubt this, and believe that consumer health startups have played a miniscule role in affecting real behavior change.  So far, they have provided diet and exercise fanatics better tools to fuel their obsession.

In order to reach the ‘bottom of the pyramid’, must we then dole out dollars for weight loss? I recently spoke with Gregory Coleman, one of the founders of nExercise, which offers a gamified “rewards program” where users randomly accumulate points, similar to a lottery, which can be applied towards real world discounts.

(nExercise is also the driving force behind the recently formed FITco, or ‘Founders In Technology Combating Obesity’. FITco functions as a place for founders to form data sharing/interoperability partnerships, and aggregate marketing dollars).

Talking with Gregory, I found myself better understanding the challenges these consumer companies are up against as they seek to move beyond their core base.  In offering financial incentives, they must spark interest without destroying intrinsic motivation. Framing financial incentives in term of ‘rewards’ and ‘discounts’ helps, but the real goal is to wean users off of them.

Cash, Friends, and Coaching: A Pipe Dream?

Several academic studies have shown that a combination of financial incentives, social support, and coaching from a trusted ally, produced significant behavior change, at least in the short term.

I can imagine a day when I seamlessly upload exercise and diet related data into a CarePass-type platform, where:

  • my insurance carrier’s app notices that I have been working out, maintaining my BMI, and applies discounts to my premium.
  • my doctor’s app (motivated by value-based reimbursement), suggests that I keep my maximum heart rate below 160 BPM
  • I display achievement badges to my friends, and make my data available to health companies in order to receive discounts/free samples

Hmmm, what is that distant feeling of unease, the feeling like I am a pawn in someone else’s Grand Plan?  It might have something to do with the complete loss of privacy around my data.  However, if those premium discounts are steep enough, I can live with that.

Whether we get people sharing their health data or tempt them with financial incentives for weight loss, the systematic nature of the obesity problem remains a force to contend with. In the end it will be up to all of us to push back against the institutions that make us fat. Seeking out motivational consumer solutions is a low cost place to start.

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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

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mHealth12Be careful what you wish for sure did apply to this year’s mHealth Summit, which was held last week in Washington D.C. Of the some 4,000 in attendance, I was one of the 10% or was it even 1% of those present that have attended all four events in succession. It is with that perspective that I came away from this year’s mHealth Summit more disappointed than ever.

At previous mHealth Summits, I often bemoaned the lack of organization of the conference, the often bizarre exhibitors one would find (couple of years back one exhibitor, and I kid you not, was marketing herbal aphrodisiacs) and basic necessities one would find at virtually any event, breaks with coffee, maybe a snack here and there. This disorganized, but charming event was mHealth Alliance Summits of years past. Continue reading →

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Humana Jumps into HIE Market, Claims Analytics Turn Sights of Clinical, Med Adherence

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CR_brandWebNovember saw the acquisition of yet another HIE vendor by a payer (Humana). An in-depth analysis of this acquisition and its implications was provided to Chilmark Advisory Service (CAS) clients at the end of November. Following are abstracts of the three research notes in our latest Monthly Update.

Humana Leaps Into the HIE Market
The health insurance industry is undergoing massive upheaval. Payers don’t need a crystal ball to see that in the near future, providers will sell services directly to employers, and that insurers need to get creative in order to stay competitive. With its acquisition of HIE vendor, Certify Data Systems, Humana joined two other payers in the HIE market: Aetna and UnitedHealth Group. Yet Humana’s strategy sets it apart from the other payers. On a single day in November, Humana announced not one but three acquisitions: Certify plus two Florida-based managed care service organizations. Humana has clearly articulated its plan to become the preferred Integrated Delivery Provider to Medicare Advantage members and dual eligibles. By adding Certify’s strong HIE capabilities to its bag of tricks, along with the ability to deliver primary care directly to a large Medicare population, Humana has positioned itself to do just that. Continue reading →

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Benchmarking Payers Adoption of Consumer Tech

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Awhile back, a large health insurer (payer) commissioned Chilmark Research to do a market scan on how payers across the country were using emerging consumer technologies to engage their members. We found this project to be quite interesting and rather than have much of that research sit on the shelves forevermore, we decided to build upon it.

Today we are releasing the results of that effort.

Our latest report: Benchmark Report: Payer Adoption of Emerging Consumer Technologies takes a close look at over 40 payer (health insurers) initiatives that are using a wide variety of consumer technologies (apps, social media, games, etc.) for member engagement. Here’s the PR announcing the report’s release.

Now it is well-known that payers have had a very mixed record in engaging their members. Part of the problem has been trust as members are justified in taking a cautious approach when sharing their health information with payers for fear of future denials. Secondly, many payer initiatives have been half-baked wherein payers have not been fully engaged themselves in the concept of member engagement.

But as we pointed out in a post earlier this summer, this is all beginning to change. Numerous market forces are now pressing down upon payers and payers are increasingly coming to the realization that they need to deploy member engagement solutions that work. Payers are now going to where consumers already are seeking to engage their members via a variety of consumer-based technologies. This report is our initial effort to gain a greater understanding of what payers are doing today and provide some guidance as to how their efforts will evolve overtime.

One thing we have learned in the course of our research is that despite all the talk, the majority of these efforts are in their infancy and that the vast majority of payers have not even begun to venture down this path. Therefore, we intend to update this report on a periodic basis to benchmark payer adoption of consumer tech in support of member engagement and gain an even deeper understanding of what works and just as importantly, what does not.

Thanks to the many that we have interviewed over the course of the last several months to compile this report as your inputs have been invaluable.

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Payers Take Another Stab at Engagement with Consumer-based Tools

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It is now nail-biting time, as we here at Chilmark Research brace ourselves for the upcoming Supreme Court decision on the legitimacy of the Affordable Care Act.  We as a nation are indeed living in very interesting times and I am again reminded why I find healthcare markets endlessly fascinating (and perplexing). (Editor’s note: This post was written by senior analyst Cora Sharma and highlights some of her latest research that looks at payer strategies for patient/member engagement.)

Of interest is just how many of the ~30 million uninsured US citizens will land on insurers’ doorsteps in 2014. Even if the Individual Mandate is upheld, it is still uncertain just how many of these uninsured individuals will opt to pay penalties rather than purchase health insurance.

For my patient engagement research, I have spent the past several months speaking with executives at large payers about their consumer-focused strategies.  Just how are payers planning on using relevant consumer technologies to keep new individual customers engaged and healthy?  After such a dismal track record over the years around health/wellness/DM initiatives, is it worth another go-around? (Cora’s research will culminate in a forthcoming report to be released within the next couple of weeks.)

Payer Initiatives in Consumer Technologies
Kaiser Permanente and Humana actually began experimenting in this area circa 2008, creating flash-based, online health games for children. In 2010, UHG released the first version of the OptumizeMe social game App, Anthem released its Grocery Guide App (now EOL), and Aetna partnered with OneRecovery.com to provide a social network for members in recovery.

Now all of the major payers have ongoing products, partnerships, and pilots around consumer-focused health and wellness and disease management — though with varying respective strategies (the upcoming report explores these 35 ongoing payer initiatives in detail).

The figure below shows an interesting slice of data around social games, in that the majority of these initiatives are becoming social and ‘gamified’:

Note: Data point positions do not represent degree of gamification/ social-ification. These are just meant to illustrate number of initiatives in each category

Another trend our research has found is the willingness of payers to look beyond health and wellness and towards the complex FDA-regulated space of chronic disease management solutions (partnering with Healthrageous and Welldoc), as well as seeking to improve member ‘Wellbeing’.  Aetna’s partnership with Mindbloom to offer members the premium version of the Life Game™ is one of the few efforts we found among payers that looks to engage the full spectrum of health of a member with a focus on Wellbeing.

Growing market in payers that can transition to a post-FFS world.
In the future, we predict that this market will continue growing along two distinct tracks:

  1. In payers that successfully transition their businesses to risk-sharing, care coordinating models (ACO/PCMH) looking to proactively engage members/patients in self-managing their health; and
  2. As pure marketing-plays, e.g. releasing cool mobile Apps that generate a nice press release, some market buzz, but little else.

As many readers may know, the health insurance industry is going through a period of rapid transformation.  Payers with the means and the wherewithal to innovate their business models are purchasing providers, as well as partnering with them for data-sharing agreements and ACO-like payment contracts.  Some large payers are also getting into the ACO-enablement business through acquisition of software companies.

Insurers who do not innovate their business models towards a post-FFS (fee for service) world (be they pure insurance providers or mostly claims processors) will find little incentive to experiment heavily with emerging consumer technologies.  The crux of the matter is that they will never have the long-term incentives (nor the culture) to shift gears away from their actuarial focus and will remain low margin businesses, if they manage to survive at all.

Affecting behavior change towards health and wellness has proven incredibly difficult over the long haul. There is scant evidence that these new payer initiatives that seek to adopt common consumer engagement technologies and strategies are meeting objectives. As the entire healthcare industry pivots towards new bundled care reimbursement models though, there may be a glimmer of hope. I remain cautiously optimistic to see payers experimenting with and adopting emerging consumer technologies, knowing that there is still a long road to travel.

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