As efficiently as possible

The tools together will enable health providers to be able to see the landscape of the patient’s conditions, instead of the usual focus on a single disease. Both companies also indicate that the HealthIntent platform is improved so that it becomes possible for health providers to define specific care episodes and to make an analysis of the expected costs for that episode.

 "A payment system that focuses per episode of care designed around the patient is the next logical step in the evolution of payment systems in healthcare," says JaeLynn Williams. "By defining a period of time, individual practitioners work together as a team, toward a clearly predetermined purpose: to guide the patient as efficiently as possible through the care process."

Assess, predict and refine

The Patient-focused Episodes Software defines more than 500 care episodes, inpatient and outpatient, chronic and acute. By taking into account the complex health history of a patient, the software can now show risk-adjusted episodes where analytics might be deployed for better outcomes.

HealthIntent’s enterprise data warehouse, meanwhile, will support bundled payments, compare provider costs and provide classification such as diagnosis-related Group. Providers can view data to help evaluate the effectiveness of clinical care, predict and refine treatments.