Ehrs must evolve to meet the objectives of value based care

EHRs Must Evolve to Meet the Objectives of Valuebased Care Though the EHR is expected to lighten processes such as medical records review, they have certain shortcomings that need to be put right.

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Value-based care is one of the most important considerations for physicians now, and many believe that it is here to stay. To meet the objectives of value-based care, providers have to transform their practices to better manage care quality and cost. But are physician practices ready and fully equipped to achieve this?

Probably no, because electronic health record systems are still not up to the mark or infallible. Though the EHR is expected to lighten processes such as medical records review, they have certain shortcomings that need to be put right. These shortcomings are discussed in a medicaleconomics.com post.  Do not capture all information required: Built to automate a fee-for-service healthcare system, EHRs specialize in recording patient encounters in office settings and converting physician-patient encounters into medical billing codes.

However, EHRs do not capture the information required to report for the merit-based incentive payment system, or that required to report comorbidities and progress against evidence-based care pathways.  Poor interoperability: Different EHR systems across the healthcare spectrum do not communicate or talk to each other. If care is to be co-ordinated, and the best outcome ensured for patients, EHRs should be interoperable. This requires custom interfaces as well as new EHR fields and workflows to populate the data.

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 Lack of patient portals that can ensure optimal patient engagement: To meet value-based care requirements mandate, a direct and interactive engagement with patients is needed. This is to ensure progress against care plans.

Another requirement is consistent, real-time access to emergent symptoms and transitions in care.  Incomplete data analytics: Providers are required to benchmark and manage their patient population in terms of cost and quality. However, quality measure reporting from the electronic health record is limited by the volume of uncaptured clinical data, and the absence of payer claims data that is vital to calculating cost.  EHRs cannot support the broader and more complex fee-forvalue workflows: EHRs have not evolved sufficiently to support fee-for-value workflows that need to be cohesive and involve all members of the care team across all healthcare settings and into the patient’ home.

Thus, legacy EHR systems cannot successfully meet the objectives of the fee-for-value model, and the need of the day are new systems of EHRs that are specifically designed for valuebased care. There is no doubt that with new alternative payment models being adopted by healthcare providers, payers will expect to see and fund new capabilities to support their medical practice’s transformation.

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Providers on their part will have to focus on certain priorities.  Better data aggregation and analytics  Have revenue cycle management at the forefront of their financial planning, with focus on alternative payment models and risk  Manage complex reimbursement calculations that are driven by quality outcomes and costs.

Today, medical practices must reconsider the teams, skills, workflows and tools that will help them reap success. EHRs that were introduced in connection with Meaningful Use and make patient documentation and important processes such as medical claims review easier, are emerging as one of the main elements required to equip providers to understand and manage the quality of care and costs involved.With the shift to value-based care, the demand is for multidisciplinary care teams having powerful data as well as evidence-based pathways that will help them provide quality care for their patients holistically across various care settings.

www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com

918-221-7791