Health IT, Hospitals

KPMG survey: Data aggregation continues to pose challenge for population health ambitions

“The complaints about incorporating technology into clinical workflows are fairly common and have many doctors and others involved with care delivery dissatisfied with electronic health records and other tools,” said Todd Ellis, principal at KPMG.

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Nobody ever said the journey from fee-for-service to outcomes-based care would be easy. But despite the fact that 44 percent of providers have adopted a population health program, a KPMG survey found, navigating the best path to aggregating and standardizing data from multiple sources poses the biggest obstacle to wider implementation of these programs.

The survey included 86 participants who identified themselves as working for a payer or healthcare provider during a KPMG webcast. In addition to 44 percent of providers implementing population health programs, about 24 percent are in the process of implementing a population health program within the next three years, the KPMG survey said.

“The complaints about incorporating technology into clinical workflows are fairly common and have many doctors and others involved with care delivery dissatisfied with electronic health records and other tools,” said Todd Ellis, principal at KPMG.

Additional population health implementation challenges include stakeholder adoption (10 percent) and integrating with clinical workflows (10 percent).

Epharmix Cofounder Joe McDonald grasped some of these and other challenges population health program implementation poses in a column he penned for MedCity News last year.

Population health tools all share a significant vulnerability: They lack real-time insight into your patients’ current status. Risk stratification algorithms are inherently reactive because they rely on data such as past medical claims. That places the burden on care managers to track and monitor patients to effectively mitigate population health risk. And care managers are generally experienced nurses, so they’re not cheap. In most cases, they’re not creating billable hours, either, so efficiency is paramount.

Michael Beaty, a principal at KPMG’s Healthcare & Life Sciences practice, said the group was encouraged that nearly half of payers and providers are seeing the benefits of moving away from fee-for-service care.

“Providers are taking on more financial risk from these programs, but they have a greater opportunity to share from savings. Payers gain from administrative efficiencies and letting providers take on that risk,” Beaty said.

The survey findings raise important questions about the progress towards outcomes-based care and what the Republicans’ push for an alternative to the Affordable Care Act could do to this progress. Will the population health infrastructure be strong enough that it simply makes more sense to proceed on the current course rather than to dismantle it? Are the Republican efforts too little too late?

Photo: Bigstock

 

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