Highmark Health this week announced its partnership with Epic, which hosts the IT giant’s Payer Platform on Google Cloud to enable greater coordination and cross-collaboration between payers and providers.
WHY IT MATTERS
The goal of a cloud-based implementation is to enable easier and more timely sharing of insights from payers and providers to help educate consumers in their care journey, the companies say, with a virtual platform that provides faster decision-making or better care.
“Epic’s Payer Platform is a powerful tool that allows payers and providers to work together more effectively,” said Dr. Tony Farah, Chief Medical and Clinical Transformation Officer at Highmark Health, said in a statement. Working with Google Cloud represents “another step forward in achieving better experiences for both consumers and physicians, while improving health outcomes and reducing healthcare costs.”
For health care systems, the goal is to help providers find the best care that falls under their patients’ specific care plans, the announcement said. This allows them to create optimized treatment plans that can minimize out-of-pocket costs while accelerating authorizations.
Higmark says Google Cloud-powered automation can help with tasks such as “creating an authorization case, prompting concurrent acute care assessment, or initiating transitional care,” through Epic’s Payer Platform.
Meanwhile, healthcare systems looking to improve population health management can use the platform to work with Highmark to close gaps in care, prevent unnecessary outreach, and assess quality outcomes. All this while automating the notification process for payers around admissions, discharges and transfers.
THE BIG TREND
Highmark says more than 7 million of its plan members currently see at least one provider using Epic. The new announcement is expected to automatically close perhaps 2.5 care gaps – a potential increase of 300 percent.
The health plan cites the example of Allegheny Health Network, which predicts annual savings of $2.7 million from shared claims data that can be reallocated to other quality improvement and patient experience initiatives.
ON THE RECORD
“Highmark Health’s use of Google Cloud will enable the organization to create an intelligence system equipped with AI to deliver valuable analytics and insights to healthcare professionals, patients and members,” said Amy Waldron, director of healthcare and life sciences strategy and solutions, Google Cloud. “Highmark Health’s investment in cloud technology delivers real-time value and simplifies communications; it is redefining the provider and consumer experience.”
“Using automation for responsible data sharing is a game changer, especially when it comes to reducing the administrative burden of communicating clinical information in different directions – to payers, providers and customers,” said Richard Clarke, Chief Analytics Officer at Highmark Health. “It enables informed decisions without the need for manual back and forth, all within the confines of Highmark’s secure Google Cloud infrastructure.”
Mike Miliard is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.