the role of digital health in quality reporting

The Importance of Quality Reporting

With constant access to the internet, consumers can shop around for the best product and services for almost every scenario. This even includes their healthcare. Patients no longer continue going to the same hospital because they were born there, their family does, or it is closest. Patients can pick and choose their doctor or hospital based on their quality reporting scores, patient outcomes, and cost. Various websites provide this service, as well as Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) or Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) public data.

Whether it is weak quality reports, lackluster patient outcomes, or high costs, patients will seek out other physicians to ultimately find the best care (See Your MIPS Score Stays with You). With the increase in healthcare locations across the country, some patients now have the option to choose their provider and institution at which to receive care. The rise of mobile technology is lending to patients receiving their care at home, saving time and effort on their end while improving the overall patient experience for the healthcare system. This newfound choice creates a greater emphasis on physicians and hospitals to pay attention to their quality reporting and patient outcomes.

The numbers of patients with multiple comorbidities are higher than ever before. These comorbidities and chronic conditions are extremely impactful to the care a physician gives to their patient. In addition, chronic conditions and comorbidities are impactful in understanding the way a patient responds to treatment and recovers from surgeries and other interventions. It is essential that physicians are collecting data, not only thorough past medical history for their patients, but also medications, and family health history.

The Role of Digital Health in Quality Reporting

For a practice to effectively collect this much data for each patient, it is incredibly time-consuming. A significant amount of time is required to not only have the patient read and sign consent forms, but also to complete intake forms for necessary information, and input all of this into the electronic medical record for the physician to read. Time and resources are precious in clinical and hospital settings, which is why it is so important to implement technology that aids clinical and hospital staff in completing this.

cliexa not only digitizes all consent forms and intake questions but discretely integrates each aspect of the clinical forms into the electronic medical record (EMR). Medical data now appears instantly in the EMR, just like a staff member or a medical assistant would have typed it. Medical staff and physicians can then review the information that is already in the EMR and proceed to treat the patient from a well-rounded point of view. cliexa allows the patient to complete their consent and intake forms while away from the clinic. Patients download the cliexa application and complete their paperwork, taking the time constraints away from the clinic or hospital, and allowing the patient to be more thorough in their information.

Receiving accurate and thorough past medical history, medications, and family history have huge effects on patients’ outcomes and quality reporting. A physician can use cliexa to identify a higher incidence of heart disease in a patient’s family and use this information to not only order tests and screen for heart disease in their patient but also discuss weight-loss strategies and lifestyle changes [1]. Our platform is designed to aid a physician in their foresight to catch an issue before it arises. This helps ensure physician’s patient outcomes and naturally improves quality reporting. Likewise, a surgeon can utilize cliexa and identify if their patient is a current smoker. They can use this information to assess the increased risk their patient has when consenting to elective surgery [2]. By including that data in their reporting, they are not only protecting themselves but can also start a conversation regarding smoking cessation with that patient.

In a time when quality reporting and patient outcomes not only influence your success as a physician but also how many patients you see and retain, it is more important than ever to partner with cliexa to help you achieve this. It is becoming more important to understand the needs and desires of patients to ensure your MIPS scores do not suffer, and virtual health is one way to address changing patient needs.  While patient experience is subject to change over time, quality reporting, patient outcomes, and physician ratings are only updated every two years. From the time you notice that your data is negative, it will take an additional two years to see if your outcomes have changed positively. Time is of the essence to enhance your data, receive more patients, and improve your quality reporting and patient outcomes.

[1] Moonesinghe, R., Yang, Q., Zhang, Z., & Khoury, M. J. (2019, July 16). Prevalence and Cardiovascular Health Impact of Family History of Premature Heart Disease in the United States: Analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2007-2014. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6662130/

[2] Theadom, A., & Cropley, M. (2006, October). Effects of preoperative smoking cessation on the incidence and risk of intraoperative and postoperative complications in adult smokers: a systematic review. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563647/

Addressing EMR-Related Issues with A Care Management Platform

Introduction to cliexa’s Care Management Platform

There is a need for additional digital health and care management platforms to alleviate some of the burdens of the electronic medical record (EMR) through enhanced customization, streamlined data collection, and integrated compliance algorithms into a digital patient intake and remote monitoring platform, like cliexa.

cliexa’s care management solution is designed to increase clinical efficiency by providing digitized intake forms and qualifying patients for reimbursements automatically. This process aims to streamline the documentation and data collection procedure so that providers spend less time documenting, and more time with their patients.

Through an automated process, clinical metrics and quality data, via patient-reported outcomes, integration into the Merit-based Incentive Payment (MIPS) quality reports can be done in the EMR to maximize compliance and reimbursements. This technology empowers clinicians to make intelligent correlations between: 

  • Medical History
  • Clinical Assessments
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Connected Device Data
  • Payor Claims Data
  • Medication Adherence

How are the barriers to EMRs for the physicians addressed by cliexa?

Coordinating care for better diagnosis 

Patients can check their progress from their handsets or tablets, which is subsequently sent to their physicians in a consistent and objectified approach in order to measure their disease activity scores. This information is then passed through the cliexa Cloud into the provider’s existing EMR system.

Along with serving as a chronic care management system, a care management platform like cliexa, are employed for clinical trials, to process digital forms which are sent to an existing EMR system, for the remote management of patients’ progress.

Improved accuracy and reproducibility of data

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) measure any phase of a patient’s condition and health status directly from the patient, regardless of the analysis of the patient’s responses by a clinician or anyone else. This naturally advances the precision of how, why and what the patient is going through and can be interpreted into disease activity scores to evaluate the severity of the disease. 

Reduced external pressures on Physician-Patient relationship

Physician burnout, compressed clinical grids, greater medical complexity, EMR coverage, increasing costs, variable medical data, reduced reimbursement, advertisement and marketing are the identified external pressures on the physician-patient relationship. Smart systems like cliexa, address these issues through the implementation of PROs.

Clinicians have found PROs to be a useful mechanism for shared decision-making in the right environment with the right workload. This facilitates achievable endpoints that promote the physician-patient relationship by better time management, a common platform for patients and clinicians to trace and envision their disease activity and simplified documentation.

Less time consumption and ease of implementation 

Flawless integration into the current workflow, customizable evaluation and questionnaires configure effortlessly with your EMR system. The cliexa Cloud passes the information responded by the patients in the care management platform directly to your EMR, customized depending on your preference.

The system sets in with no disturbance in your workflow and requires approximately one day to set up without any IT commitments. The information is sent to the clinicians’ files in the formats of your choice to verify data quality before full integration.

Customizability is how cliexa deals with all the reservations over implementation. The platform is structured according to the requirements of the physicians, patients, and the healthcare composition, without the need for an on-site IT team. The staff training can be done in a day along with minimally invasive implementation, meaning simplicity throughout the course of implementation.

Cost-effectiveness and reimbursements 

The healthcare systems are known to have the following reservations with PROs; high capital investment needed, physician engagement, information management requirements, integration of knowledge, privacy considerations and the management of critical or missing information.

cliexa attends to these considerations through a reimbursement structure and flawless integration. Although investment is one of the key considerations, the software links providers and payors to rationalize the process of Content Management System (CMS) and payor compensation.

cliexa has formulated the ROI calculator on the platform for the people who choose to go for its reimbursement structure. The physician engagement and management requirements are addressed by focusing on time management and easing the procedure as per the interest of the physicians.

Better patient experience and versatility of use

cliexa is a free-to-use care management platform for patients, available on the App Stores for all mobile platforms. This includes devices such as smartphones or tablets that consist of the app store for download. Unlike other patient platforms, cliexa is independent of clinics or healthcare offices. This means that it is available for the personal use of the patients.

Even if the physician’s office does not use the software, patients can still track their condition and its progress by using this versatile software. With the application storing your history, you can have your data accessible when switching over to a new clinic or healthcare provider simply but updating the care treatment plan.

Privacy and confidentiality

All the rules of privacy and security laid down by HIPAA guidelines are followed in order to protect your information. It is further ensured that any data is not being shared with anyone other than your healthcare providers. The software in the clinics and on patients’ devices is updated automatically by a remote device management system.

All of the aforementioned points are promising ways through which the EMR-related issues can be potentially addressed. However, cliexa or any other smart software is not a direct and the most precise way of diagnosis, rather it is a means to follow the health progress, functioning alongside primary care. Thus, if you are experiencing consistent symptoms of a chronic condition or a health issue, make it your first priority to visit your healthcare center for a checkup by the primary care provider.

cliexa is now available in the athenaHealth Marketplace

Today, cliexa Inc., a thriving producer of mobile health care management services, revealed a partnership with athenahealth, Inc.® through athenahealth’s “More Disruption Please” (MDP) Marketplace program. As an MDP partner, our cross-communication platform developed for chronic pain patients and providers, cliexa-EASE, is now immediately available to athenahealth’s network of 100,000+ providers and countless prospective clients. EASE enables patients and clinicians to make intelligent correlations between medication dosage, frequency and heightened or reduced symptoms by leveraging an application that functions as a pain assessment model for chronic pain management with seamless scalable EMR integration via API and global HL7 connectivity.

cliexa provides the ideal pain management application to leverage patient-reported outcomes to improve treatment decisions and patient experience, while also maximizing compliance and reimbursement. cliexa-EASE is designed for chronic pain management, podiatry, and general patient wellness. cliexa-EASE allows providers to gather digitized intake data and customize assessments to correlate data that best adheres to their patient population.

In order to provide physicians with high accuracy metrics, cliexa-EASE uses patient reporting methods on visual body maps, and pain expression in voice, face, and body movements. This allows physicians to view the physical attributes of pain beyond self-reported descriptions which can often be difficult to translate into clinical diagnostics terms. Tracking these markers allows physicians to use patient-reported outcomes to treat the “whole patient.”  One of cliexa’s existing clients, Anderson Podiatry Center, is already seeing the benefits of using the cliexa platform with a custom digital patient intake and screening process, also digital consent forms, integrated to their athenahealth electronic medical record (EMR).

The athenahealth Marketplace partnership opens up a hyperconnected, national network of healthcare professionals providing chronic pain management. With this partnership, the two companies align to provide measurable financial and clinical results for providers. cliexa is a real-time data provider for future medicine and will continue to build on our vision to increase patient-provider engagement and compliance through mobile health solutions.

“We are excited to partner both with athenahealth and Anderson Podiatry Center to deploy cliexa platform into the marketplace as this is the first of many subspecialties we currently have in our portfolio. We are looking forward to implementing other subspecialty applications to the athenahealth marketplace which will strengthen our partnership in healthcare space,” says Mehmet Kazgan, Founder and CEO of cliexa.

Eric Seyler, CEO of Anderson Podiatry Center, says, “The transition to a digital patient intake has given us more opportunities to help our patients than we had envisioned. Our patients have spent less time in the waiting room with more time delegated to their doctor’s visit. The integration is done in real-time which supports our goal to be more efficient with clinic resources while helping to provide the best possible patient experience.”

cliexa enables patients to track their chronic disease activity by quantifying symptoms using scientifically-proven and clinically-validated scoring models. cliexa delivers quantified disease activity and documentation through real-time integration to athenahealth electronic medical record, which streamlines processes and increases efficiency in population health management.

View our listing here: //marketplace.athenahealth.com/product/cliexa

Mobile Health Applications - Value Based Care

In today’s healthcare system, there is a focus on creating a value-based care system to foster a standard of effectiveness, and efficiency when it comes to patient health outcomes, and reduced costs. Through this model, healthcare providers are incentivized to deliver high quality care and this value is derived from measuring health outcomes over time. There is significant pressure that many providers face to be able to quantify their patient’s health outcomes in order to show they are in fact delivering “value-based care.” A value-based model creates a need for a fruitful cross-communication system that extends to patients, providers, payers, and all involved in the healthcare system in order to quantify and qualify health measures.

In a effort to utilize patient-reported health status to improve care, cliexa is collaborating with the American College of Cardiology to develop technical modules targeting cardiology-specific diseases using remote patient monitoring. The first module, cliexa-PULSE, has been developed is for Atrial Fibrillation and includes patient-reported symptom tracking, medication reconciliation functions, connections to wearable data and claims data connection. This information will fulfill reporting needs for patients through visual tracking graphics in the application and to physicians in a summarized, customized manner. Moving forward we are looking to commercialize this product through the ACC’s 2,500 members and beyond.

Improved communication and reduced costs can be achieved by improving patient engagement, streamlining clinical workflow, and implementing a customizable technology that will automate clinical processes, analyze and simplify patient data, which can lead to improved care and health outcomes. By the incorporation of patients’ health status and value via patient-reported outcomes (PROs), providers can monitor the quality of health care delivery.

PROs can be used as absolute terms, or as a change from a previous result as well as a measurement in clinical trials. Physicians can better determine baseline status, clinical trial endpoints, monitor therapy effectiveness, assess change in stats and prognosis predictor, while the patient experiences positive impacts on daily activities, emotional wellbeing, psychological health, and social function. In addition, PROs can aid clinics to improve patient outcomes, quality of life and satisfaction by using the PROs to better inform their care. PROs prioritize the important details in a clinical encounter and aid a better understanding of the motivation behind patient behavioral change. With this information, the clinic can analyze the evidence, design clinical trials and change their practice and policy. In addition, PROs can aid clinics to improve patient outcomes, quality of life and satisfaction by using the data to better inform their care. PROs prioritize the important details in a clinical encounter and aid a better understanding of the motivation behind patient behavioral change. With this information, the clinic can analyze the evidence, design clinical trials and change their practice and policy.

Patient-centered data collection outside of a traditional clinical is the next frontier of modern healthcare. By digitizing and automating PROs, both patients and physicians benefit financially and through effective time management. PROs tackle the challenge of long surveys, care integration, multimorbid patients, and improving the relationship between patient and provider. Clinicians need instruments (surveys) to capture patient-reported measures of symptom status, functional status and health-related quality of life. PROs help quantify the disease from patients’ perspectives, makes disease- specific measures more sensitive and relevant, help meet all the requirements of performance measures and can improve the process of delivering clinical care while bringing the patients’ voices into care. Physicians have found that PROs, in the right setting with the right workflow, are a helpful mechanism for shared decision making and help tackle the treatment goals of patient survival, free of hospitalization, and increased quality of life.

Read more from ACC: //www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2019/04/14/12/42/innovation-at-acc-collaboration-using-patient-reported-health-status-to-improve-care

In 2018, cliexa was selected as one of Jumpstart Foundry’s portfolio companies. Jumpstart recognizes the value of recent healthcare industry trends including “Remote Patient Monitoring” and “Telehealth.” In their recent article, JSF featured cliexa in their discussion of these recent technological trends in healthcare.

One of the key challenges in healthcare that we are solving is being able to render results interpretable to patients and providers, while creating efficient, streamlined communication and workflow. cliexa’s Remote Monitoring platforms assist providers in making more informed decisions about treatment plans and enable them to respond more quickly to new data so their patients will have fewer complications or side effects. cliexa suite of products enables providers to deliver value-based care which translates to significant cost savings.

With clinically validated scoring models, our platform provides clinicians multiple reference points with correlations to identify the accuracy of patient reported data which will result in better patient and clinician experience and enables more responsive and preventive treatments.

Patients will play a greater role in their care with cliexa and will be able to make valuable correlations to causative factors for pain flare-ups through remotely reported outcomes. The discrete clinical data and patient-reported outcomes enable providers to improve clinical decision making, while reducing liability and billing concerns with payors. These algorithms help providers respond more efficiently to new data so their patients will have fewer complications or side effects.

Click here to learn more about cliexa’s Digital Solutions for Healthcare.