Covenant Health Systems Selects MedeAnalytics To Establish The Infrastructure For Employee Population Health

Self-insured health system taps on analytics infrastructure to manage care and build competencies for Accountable Care 

MedeAnalytics recently announced that Covenant Health Systems, a not-for-profit hospital system based in New England, has adopted its analytics platform to manage the health of their employee population across its three hospitals and affiliated facilities in preparation for a broader implementation. Leveraging MedeAnalytics’ robust technology platform, the self-insured health system will be able to establish a centralized claims data warehouse with robust analytics to manage its employee population of 7,000, identify gaps in care and track cost savings opportunities.

MedeAnalytics’ Population Health solution aggregates and normalizes disparate claims, digital records, cost, patient satisfaction, and other clinical and financial data. Health plan administrators, like Covenant, are then better positioned to understand and manage risk arrangements with payers and third party administrators (TPAs). By integrating the Population Health solution with a new care management process, Covenant will be able to gain evidence-based insights that will help manage rising healthcare costs and improve the overall health of its own employee population. The new initiative will also establish a foundation for managing broader sets of data from multiple payers and multiple patient populations in the future.

“Identifying high-risk patients and ensuring that the earliest clinical interventions are put into place is an important part of successfully managing patient populations and risk. More importantly it allows us to work in partnership with our employees to improve their health,” said Richard Boehler, MD and CEO of St. Joseph Healthcare, one of three hospitals within Covenant Health Systems. “This is no small undertaking though, and we are committed to creativity, excellence and patient privacy. We have chosen an experienced analytics partner to support our population health efforts, as a foundational stepping stone to a broader participation in Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) with other payers and employers.”

Covenant will build a cross-functional clinical and financial claims team to address population health, integrate longitudinal member claims data from payers into their database and leverage the MedeAnalytics Population Health solution to identify high-risk employees. It will develop and fine-tune the care management, disease management and wellness programs for these employee groups to improve their health and reduce overall healthcare costs for the entire health system over the next year.

“As healthcare reimbursement evolves to include value-based and shared risk models, many healthcare systems like Covenant are engaging in ACO arrangements,” said Andrew Hurd, MedeAnalytics Chairman and CEO. “We are pleased to partner with Covenant to provide data analytics that help position them as a strong partner for broader risk-based arrangements with payers.”

The MedeAnalytics Population Health solution offers insight into clinical quality, utilization and costs associated with patient populations. It also integrates closely with a broad array of health information exchange (HIE) and provider-facing clinical workflow partners to provide a comprehensive population health management platform.

At the upcoming HIMSS14 conference in Orlando, Covenant Health Systems will lead a Lunch & Learn session covering the population health implementation process on Tuesday, February 25, 2014 from 12:00-1:00 p.m. (Room W202B). Richard Boehler, MD and CEO of St. Joseph Healthcare and Karen Bowling, System CIO for Covenant Health Systems will share best practices working with payers to obtain longitudinal member claims data, how to identify key target areas for cost savings, important privacy considerations for employee health data and other lessons learned by Covenant through this process.

Covenant Health Systems and Mary Washington Hospital, a not-for-profit regional system of two hospitals and 28 healthcare facilities and wellness services based in Fredericksburg, Virginia, are among the most recent provider partners to implement MedeAnalytics’ Population Health solution.

About MedeAnalytics
MedeAnalytics provides evidence-based insights to solve a real problem that plagues healthcare – how to use the immense amount of patient data collected along the care continuum to deliver cost-effective care and promote a healthier population. It’s analytics platform delivers intelligence that helps healthcare organizations detect their greatest areas of risk and identify opportunities to improve their financial health. It empowers providers and payers to collaborate and use data to strengthen their operations and improve the quality of care. MedeAnalytics’ cloud-based tools have been used to analyze more than 21 billion patient encounters in the United States and United Kingdom, providing better care to more than 30 million patients and better business for 900 healthcare organizations. For more information, visit www.medeanalytics.com.

About Covenant Health System
Covenant Health Systems is a values-based, Catholic, not-for-profit health care system based in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. The health system sponsors hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living residences and other health and elder services throughout New England. Covenant is committed to the health of the individuals and communities they serve, and strive to offer a continuum of high quality care. Covenant also serves as a health care consultant to health and elder care facilities throughout New England.