NextGen Healthcare and Availity Introduce Health Plan/Physician Data Sharing Program

by Business Wire via The Motley Fool Jul 23rd 2013 5:11AM
Updated Jul 23rd 2013 5:14AM

NextGen Healthcare and Availity Introduce Health Plan/Physician Data Sharing Program

Integrated EHR Environment to Foster Collaborative Coordinated Care

HORSHAM, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Quality Systems, Inc. (NAS: QSII) and a leading provider of health care information systems and connectivity solutions, today announced the introduction of a collaborative care project with Florida's largest health insurer, Florida Blue, and Availity, a top health information network to improve health care delivery for Florida residents.

The program enables physicians to exchange clinical data and patient care summaries with the health plan through integration with the NextGen®Ambulatory EHR. The organizations are joining to make patient-specific clinical information accessible at the point of care to both providers and payers concurrently, helping them more effectively coordinate care for patients by flagging potential care gaps and care opportunities.

Three provider groups—Family Care Partners (Jacksonville), HeartWell, LLP (Miami) and Baptist Health South Florida—have agreed to implement the joint project to improve health care delivery and foster collaborative coordinated care for all Florida residents.

The goal of this program is to help providers better coordinate care for their patients by identifying potential gaps in care, lack of coordination among providers that might lead to less-than-effective provision of care, and the identification of other opportunities that would mitigate unnecessary care if certain pro-active measures are taken earlier in the plan of care for a particular patient.

Physicians will access the NextGen Ambulatory EHR to view patient care summaries and care reminders from Availity—information that gives physicians a more holistic view of the patient's medical history, at an opportune time in the patient encounter.

Additionally, the program will automate the exchange of care summaries back to the health plan for quality improvement reporting. The two-way integration at the EHR level automates the costly, manual exchange between providers and payers of critical clinical information necessary to support today's care delivery, as well as revenue cycle and emerging payer driven value-based payment models and quality improvement programs.

"Together with NextGen, Availity enables health plans and physicians to easily meet the dynamic clinical information exchange requirements for new value-based care models, while reducing the administrative cost of business between providers and health plans. Our strong partnership with NextGen will focus on delivering value to Florida Blue, physicians, hospitals, and most importantly, patients, while driving sustainable innovation in the delivery of health care, said Russ Thomas, chief executive officer for Availity."

"This project is an important step toward meaningful payment reform for both providers and commercial insurers. Together with NextGen and Availity, we are working to provide more cost-effective, better quality, patient-centric care to our patient population," said Daniel Choquette, director of information technology for Family Care Partners.

"Baptist Health South Florida is very pleased to be partnering with NextGen and Florida Blue to explore and assist in architecting what may be the future of health care with regards to patient management and data sharing," said Mimi Taylor, corporate vice president and chief information officer, information technology for Baptist Health South Florida.

"This program is a truly integrated, collaborative and strategic approach to providing more efficient, cost-effective care to our patient population," said Jeffrey Kaplan, chief operating officer for the Miami multi-site cardiology practice HeartWell, LLP. "We are pleased to be one of the medical groups chosen by Florida Blue to participate and look forward to working with NextGen Healthcare in this joint program to better identify a patient's health care needs while eliminating duplicative testing."

"We are very pleased to be supporting our clients in a path-breaking strategy to share data between payer and provider in an automated manner. Our hope is that patient care will be improved and providers' professional lives will be more organized," said Charlie Jarvis, Senior Vice President, Health Reform for Quality Systems Inc., NextGen Healthcare. "We are anxious to quickly move this demonstration into a network-wide and a future nation-wide strategy with all payers who support our client base."

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/07/23/nextgen-healthcare-and-availity-introduce-health-p/