National Health IT Week In Review

Last week marked the 13th annual National Health IT Week. This event is dedicated to celebrating the essential role of Health IT in transforming health and healthcare in the U.S. As a healthcare analytics provider, MedeAnalytics is dedicated to continued innovation of our platform and suite of analytics solutions to meet the ever-changing needs of healthcare providers and payers.

This year, National Health IT Week focused on four integral themes that highlight the value of health IT, including:

• Supporting Healthcare Transformation
• Expanding Access to High Quality Care
• Increasing Economic Opportunity
• Making Communities Healthier

Here’s our recap of each:

• Supporting Healthcare Transformation – Digital health is playing a critical role in driving transformation in care delivery, including improving quality and safety, interoperability, data sharing and patient-consumer engagement. Analytics tools play a major role in helping organizations achieve their goals in healthcare transformation, but what else can they do? Our blog shares steps for organizations to ensure they are making the most out of their analytics investment and successfully supporting their organization’s transformation journey.   
• Expanding Access to High Quality Care – As the industry shifts to value-based care, organizations are putting a greater emphasis on quality care. Innovative technologies like telehealth and remote patient modeling are helping to increase patients’ access to the care and the support they need, which in turn supports the industry on its journey to value. As part of this initiative, HIMSS shared its health IT “wish list” with Congress. which included a request to improve and expand telehealth offerings.
• Increasing Economic Opportunity – The healthcare industry makes up 17.8% of the U.S. economy and employs over 12,000 people. This growing workforce is full of diverse, competent individuals who are passionate about supporting economic growth. Part of this growth is dependent on ensuring that all clinicians have the IT fluency needed for success. As reporting requirements evolve, value-based hesitancy grows and the industry looks to reduce physician burnout, this will only grow in importance.  
• Making Communities Healthier – At the end of the day, efforts by the health IT community are focused on one outcome: keeping families and communities healthy. Population health has been a central theme across the industry as of late and recent technologies continue to support the health of the greater population. Learn how our client St. Joseph Hospital of Covenant Health leveraged data and analytics to create a population health program in their own organization to successfully improve the health of their employees and their dependents.

As we look ahead to the future of health IT, MedeAnalytics is excited to be at the forefront of industry wide advances. Our client, the Mississippi Division of Medicaid (MSDOM) recently spoke at the Medicaid Enterprise Systems Conference to share details on how they were able to successfully set up the first clinical data exchange. Visit our blog and newsroom pages to read about other success stories.

Looking for more from National Health IT Week? Here are a few places to start:

• MedCity News and Becker’s Hospital Review share highlights from the week.
• Access #IHeartHealthIT stories here.
• Catch up via social by following @wareFLO and @gnayyar and checking hashtags: #NHITWeek, #IHeartHealthIT