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Cerner’s blog
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October 21, 2016
New strategic UK academic partnerships
By Justin Whatling, Vice President, Population Health
Close to my heart is our ability to close the loop between discovering new things in research and implementing them in real world clinical practice. We have proven our abilities to do this with Sepsis and other predictive algorithms and have contributed our new learnings back into the peer-reviewed literature. Driving adoption of evidence based care and best practice is one of the key ways we help create a World Without Medical Error, which is our outrageous ambition here at Cerner.
To this end I am pleased to let you know about some interesting developments for Cerner UK and our partnerships with universities in the UK.
October 12, 2016
Health IT should be a presidential election issue
By Meg Marshall Sr. Director, Public Policy Cerner
The 2016 presidential debates have focused on many important issues like national security, immigration, the strength of the economy and foreign policy. The topic of health care has been touched lightly, through a lens focused on the candidates’ positions regarding the Affordable Care Act. During the second presidential debate, we heard Secretary Hillary Clinton address how she would build on and improve the Affordable Care Act, and Donald Trump described a repeal-and-replace strategy that would block grant Medicaid and allow insurers to sell plans across state lines.
October 11, 2016
More hospitals seek revenue cycle partnerships to protect and improve bottom line, market share
The following content is an abridged version of a white paper published by Becker’s Hospital Review.
Technology advancement and industry shifts are driving more hospitals to adopt new strategic business models to protect their bottom line and maintain market share among financially agile competitors.
By 2018, CMS predicts 50 percent of its payments will be tied to value-based models, compared to 30 percent in 2016.
As government and commercial payers begin to impose outcomes-based contracts alongside fee-for-service payments, health care providers must optimize existing revenue cycle processes, while adding advanced and congruent technological capabilities to their financial wheelhouse. Developing advanced financial capabilities in-house, however, can be both cost-prohibitive and time-intensive.
September 30, 2016
Creating a Big Data IT infrastructure for today and tomorrow
By Ryan Hamilton, Senior Vice President, Population Health, Cerner Hospital
Payer and provider roles are blending as business models shift to a risk-based landscape, and the responsibility to manage costs and outcomes increasingly rests on the shoulders of providers. In response, health systems are deploying a range of strategies:
- Driving growth through acquisition of provider practices and other health systems
- Reducing care delivery costs to maintain profitability with respect to Medicare payments
- Tightly managing referral networks to minimize leakage
- Expanding affiliate strategies to create clinical integration across all venues of care
- Accepting an increasing number of partial- and full-risk contracts
September 23, 2016
MACRA: Witness to history
By Meg Marshall Sr. Director, Public Policy, Cerner
If you could time travel to witness one event in history of the U.S. health care system, which would you choose? The first modern group health insurance plan in 1929? The creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965? The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996? The Affordable Care Act in 2010?
What’s that you say? April 16, 2015, to witness President Barack Obama using 10 pens1 to sign into law the “Permanent Doc Fix” that inscribed the acronym MACRA into the common vernacular of health policy wonks across the country?
No? Well, maybe not any time soon.
September 20, 2016
Physician leadership and healthier habits
By Colonel (Dr.) Robert Oh, MD, MPH, CAQSM, Chief Medical Officer, Martin Army Community Hospital
Colonel Robert Oh, MD, MPH, CAQSM is a board-certified family medicine physician with an added qualification in sports medicine. He has led residency programs and served deployments in Kosovo and Iraq, spending 18 months in hostile fire zones. With his expertise on health and fitness, he was selected for the Army’s Surgeon General’s Performance Triad and System for Health Directorate as the Physician Lead. He currently is the Chief Medical Officer at Martin Army Community Hospital, Fort Benning Georgia.
One of the key principles of leadership is leading by example. In my early years as a physician, my goal was trying to be the best, most competent physician that I could be. Increasingly, I realized that I could only influence patients one at a time, and I also realized in the arena of health promotion, prevention and self-behavior change, it was not simply a matter of knowledge. Most people know what to do to influence and improve their health. Influencing health and changes in lifestyle is deeply personal and frankly, especially in the areas where self-care is the critical component for health, most do not appreciate a lecture on one’s shortcomings.
September 19, 2016
5 key considerations to take your CDI Program to the next level
By Angie Curry, BSN, RN, CCDS, Corporate CDI Manager, CoxHealth and Jeff Hurst, Senior Vice President, Revenue Cycle Management and President, RevWorks, Cerner
CoxHealth, recognized for its commitment to quality and patient safety, eliminated a two system workflow for clinical documentation specialists (CDS) in 2015, by piloting Nuance Embedded CDI within Cerner Acute Case Management. With physician documentation and clinical documentation improvement (CDI) reviews in the same patient record, CoxHealth saw increases in physician response, acceptance rates and revenue.
Angie Curry, Corporate CDI Manager at CoxHealth, tackled a unique staffing model in an effort to retain an in-demand certified team of CDS nurses and maintain the productivity gains its highly engaged medical staff is accustomed to seeing across service lines.
During CDI Week, September 19-23, Curry and Jeff Hurst, senior vice president of Cerner Revenue Cycle Management and president of Cerner RevWorks, discuss key considerations for a successful CDI program, as health care moves to value-based care.
Highly engaged medical staff
Curry: With new health care payment reform, medical record accuracy is more important than ever. Physicians must show how complex—how sick—their patients are, because future payments are dependent on what chronic conditions are being seen today. It’s a big change for physicians at CoxHealth, especially surgeons. Surgeons are now looking beyond the joint replacement and factoring in the holistic health of the patient.
September 13, 2016
What got us here, likely won’t get us there: Innovative ways to address the skills gap
By Julie Wilson, Chief People Officer
Julie Wilson discussed innovative ways to address the skills gap during the annual Missouri Department of Economic Development conference. This is a recap of takeaways and thoughts that were shared during the session.
We’re a company of 24,000 associates in 27 countries and each associate plays a central role in digitizing and helping improve the health care delivery system and the health of communities around the world. The quality of our software and services is a direct reflection of the capabilities of our team. We need great people with the talent and passion to make health care better.
September 13, 2016
Wirral on the journey to win the fight against sepsis
Sepsis kills over 44,000 people in the UK every year. More than lung cancer, breast cancer and bowel cancer combined. As some symptoms of sepsis share similarities with conditions like stroke, it can easily go misdiagnosed or undetected until it is too late.
In June 2015, Wirral University Teaching Hospital (WUTH) went live with Cerner’s St John’s Sepsis Algorithm. This algorithm continuously monitors every patient’s vital signs and physical attributes from tests and adopts international best practice guidelines to identify key early signs of sepsis and potential risks. If a patient is detected at risk, an automatic alert is generated on the bedside monitor and care givers device screens, resulting in immediate action.
September 8, 2016
Nanticoke is on the ‘cusp of something great’ with CommonWell
By Charles Palmer, Chief Information Officer, Cerner ITWorks, Client Director
Nanticoke Health Services is working with Cerner ITWorks to tackle some biggest challenges of growing a national network for data exchange in one of the smallest states, Delaware. In this blog, Charles Palmer, the chief information officer and ITWorks client director for Nanticoke Health Services, talks about how his 100-bed organization has become one of the leading users of the CommonWell Health Alliance within the Cerner client base.
When Cerner Chairman and CEO Neal Patterson challenged health care providers to help advance interoperability by joining CommonWell during his keynote speech at Cerner Health Conference 2014, Nanticoke took it to heart and pursued early implementation and adoption of the data exchange service.
September 6, 2016
Meet us – Tim talks about his experience as a paediatric nurse
By Tim James, Clinical Consultant
Tim has been a paediatric nurse for 17 years and still practices in the NHS. He has worked in the Paediatric E.D, PICU, Surgical Pre-assessment, Bed Management and as a Clinical Informatics lead for an NHS Trust in the UK. He joined Cerner in March 2015 as a Clinical Consultant in the transformation team.
One of the most frustrating things for me as a nurse is the pre-admission and admission assessment processes. There are several paper forms to complete, chances are I will ask you the same question you have already answered when seeing some of my colleagues and you will have to repeat demographics you already gave. As a nurse I am dedicating too much of my time to paperwork instead of being by the bedside, interacting with a child and their family, or preparing medications. Repetitive processes add pressure upon me as a healthcare provider because there is only so much time within a shift and there are lots of other things I need to do to provide quality care to patients. An electronic health record (EHR) can help relieve some of this pressure with all information being entered only once and available in a single place.
September 1, 2016
Meet us – Pete talks about his experience as a pharmacist
By Pete Hughes IP Strategist, Cerner UK
Pete studied Pharmacy at the Welsh School of Pharmacy, Cardiff University. He has practiced as a Pharmacist at different Trusts across the country for over 4 years. He joined Cerner in 2013 as a Delivery Consultant for Cerner’s ePMA solution and recently became Cerner’s IP Strategist for the UK and Ireland.
My role at Cerner allows me to use my experience and knowledge to drive the direction of new developments, ensuring that user’s experience and patient’s safety are at its heart. There’s nothing more rewarding than listening to clinicians, understanding the challenges they face and then working with them to find solutions and seeing the benefits, not only to them but also to their patients.
I became a Pharmacist to help improve patient care. Working at Cerner allows me to do this at a national and even global scale, utilising my professional skills with my love for technology, helping to innovate and drive how technology is used in healthcare.
August 21, 2016
Harnessing technology to optimize holistic care management strategies
By Brian Carter, Senior Director and General Manager of Population Health, Cerner
The following content was originally published on Executive Insight’s Health Systems Management website.
People around the world are experiencing an unprecedented rise in chronic conditions due to aging and unhealthy behavior. Recognizing the potential for crisis, health care is entering a new era of fundamental change. A fee-for-service model made more sense in a world where communicable diseases were more prevalent. Now, preventable, chronic diseases are the world’s biggest killer. The health care industry must turn its focus toward value and outcomes, while also containing costs, which is impossible to achieve without finding new ways to efficiently manage and coordinate care.
August 17, 2016
#HITsm Twitter chat recap: What to know about MACRA
By Sam Grefrath, Director of Regulatory Compliance Practice, Cerner
As the Jan. 1, 2017 start date for the proposed Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) rule quickly approaches, it has become one of the most discussed health care IT topics. I recently participated in Health Standard’s weekly #HITsm Twitter chat, along with other health care thought leaders, to discuss MACRA.
The discussion focused on how MACRA can positively impact patients. There were discussions about the path to Alternative Payment Models or the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and challenges associated with determining the best course of action. I reminded participants that MIPS is based off existing value-based programs and would leverage the work many organizations have already done to get them through the initial transition. I also noted that the use of different sources of data, coupled with analytics, can be a strategic enabler in the future.
August 10, 2016
Highlight reel: A conversation on CommonWell and interoperability
By Scott Stuewe, Director of the Cerner Network, Cerner
In case you missed HealthcareScene’s Blab hosted by John Lynn on June 29, have no fear. You can watch the recorded conversation with Scott Stuewe, Director of the Cerner Network at Cerner, and Daniel Cane, CEO and co-founder at Modernizing Medicine, on the topic of CommonWell Health Alliance and healthcare interoperability. Here’s a recap of some highlights from the conversation among these industry leaders:
August 10, 2016
Virtual healthcare provides flexibility for patients and providers
By John Glaser, Senior Vice President, Population Health, Cerner
Traditionally, health care has required patients and providers to be in the same place at the same time. And despite advances in medicine, this basic model of care delivery has stubbornly remained the same. The concept of Virtual Health Care is fundamentally about removing these barriers and transforming care delivery models.
As technology and infrastructure advancements related to telehealth and telemedicine have matured, the number of use cases has expanded to become part of larger Virtual Health Care-delivery models. We believe traditional industry terms like telemedicine and telehealth will wane as virtual technology and workflows become the standard for delivering a variety of health and care services. Cerner identifies telemedicine as a key capability, both in the context of virtual health and virtual care. It empowers organizations to increase access while lowering the cost of delivering health care services across the continuum of care. Using an ecosystem of virtual and remote services and technology, organizations are able to provide high quality, cost-effective care at a distance.
August 8, 2016
The current state of population health
By David Bradshaw, Chief Strategy Officer, CIO, Memorial Hermann Health System
We are going to see an extraordinary change in the next decade. Health care facilities are going to now be responsible for managing patients and populations away from the hospital. Health care facilities will be rewarded for their quality, safety and efficiency instead of their volume.
Approximately 750 accountable care organizations (ACOs) are in operation today, covering some 23.5 million lives covered under Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers. Although still in the learning stages, many ACOs have had notable success in improving quality while reducing cost. As promising results continue to emerge, more of these organizations — whose existence was once thought to be more fantasy than reality — are expected.