Medecision
Powering Population Health Management

Big data usage varies widely by industry, but in healthcare, it means the ability to achieve the nearly impossible: a complete, and actionable, picture of a patient’s health. One that delivers the insight needed to know, and manage, the risk associated with accountability for population health outcomes. Medecision has been in the thick of enabling this comprehensive profile since 1988, and its SaaS population health management solution, Aerial, reflects that.

As healthcare organizations seek to expand their population health management initiatives,Medecision offers Aerial applications to scale care coordination and care management for a diverse group of clinicians and other healthcare stakeholders often working with incomplete patient information and inefficient manual workflows. Subscribers can optimize care management for large patient populations across all risk segments, for example. Or, optimize their workflow and reporting to meet DSRIP requirements as another example.

Even with these advanced tools, the influence of patient behaviors on health outcomes has five times the influence of the efforts of providers or health plans. Medecision offers Aerial applications to engage patients, and their circles of care, for smoother recovery from health episodes, encourage in-formed patients to select appropriate treatment options and promote ongoing self-management.

An important part of the Aerial platform is the ePHRapp, or longitudinal health record, which draws on verified clinical data and financial information from a wide range of connected sources to produce a current and actionable profile of each patient in your population. Aerial ePHR provides a comprehensive and easy-to-understand clinical and financial picture of individual patients that is easily shared across a distributed care network. Reducing time spent weeding through irrelevant information, the ePHRapp facilitates smarter, comprehensive care delivery to the right patient at the right time.

Painting a complete patient picture

The healthcare industry’s difficulties with interoperability have been widely reported. Indeed, Kathleen D’Amario, Medecision CTO, identifies information sharing as the No. 1 pain point in the population health management today.

“Major barriers to data interoperability are frustrating post-reform initiatives to implement new, data-driven models,” she says.

Its 25 years of industry experience led Medecision to create Aerial to allow health systems to exchange, aggregate and normalize data from multiple distributed care teams. The platform’s adherence to interoperability standards allows data to flow from disparate sources, and the open architecture ensures new technologies can be easily incorporated. Aggregation of all types of clinical, financial, behavioral and socio-economic data enables the type of complete patient picture needed for better care planning.

Transparent patient records

As gratifying as it’s been to play a role in shifting the healthcare industry’s emphasis from volume-based care to value-based care, D’Amario is even more excited about the next step. “Patients should look for changes in the transparency of data,” she says. She’s referring to the company’s mobile app, Aerial InCircle, which is currently in market testing.

Aggregation of all types of clinical, financial, behavioral and socioeconomic data enables the type of complete patient picture needed for better care planning

Patients will be able to see their full electronic health record in real time, allowing them to use the information to take responsibility for their health, says D’Amario. They will also be able to share information with family members who are helping with their care and with other providers—a boon for those with chronic conditions.

This type of innovation will continue to be the core focus for Medecision, D’Amario says. “It’s been the key differentiating factor for us for the past five years,” she says. “We’re helping our clients win because we have innovative solutions that help our customers truly transform their business."