Accenture – The Health Care Blog

NEW: HardCore Health Podcast, Episode 1

May 15, 2019

By MATTHEW HOLT

Apparently, podcasts are new, all the rage and minting billionaires every day! So, of course, THCB had to have its own podcast, and here it is: HardCore Health

Now I’ve been doing “podcasts” (otherwise known as audio or video interviews) on THCB since before people actually had iPods (remember those, kids?). But apparently these days any punter can do an interview, call it a podcast and shove it up on Spotify. Hardcore Health is going to be a little bit different…

Hardcore Health will feature multiple guests, topics, and interludes brought to you by many co-hosts starting off with Jessica DaMassa and me. We’ll embed some (familiar) tidbits into the show including: Health in 2 Point 00, THCB Spotlights, and the WTF Health Show as well as some newer segments, including banter sessions between guests & rant sessions from health care experts. This first episode features Brian Kalis, Accenture’s “post” Digital Health expert & Niko Skievaski from Redox, and a little more.

I hope you enjoy our first episode below!

Matthew Holt is the founder and publisher of The Health Care Blog and still writes regularly for the site.

HIT Newser: Accenture Tapped to Continue Work on HealthCare.gov

Jan 4, 2015• 2

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Accenture Tapped to Continue Work on HealthCare.gov

Accenture, the consulting firm that was hired a year ago to fix the troubled HealthCare.Gov insurance exchange, is awarded a five-year, $563 million to continue its work on the federal site. The government hired Accenture Federal Services to repair the online marketplace after dropping its original contractor, CGI Federal.

The long-term contract with Accenture also signals CMS’s acknowledgement that a task as large as HealthCare.Gov is best run with leadership from an experienced, private-sector vendor.

Connecticut HIE Dissolves After Wasting Millions

A former board member for The Health Information Technology Exchange of Connecticut blames management for the failure of the entity, which was tasked to create statewide HIE but dissolved by the legislature last summer. The HITE-CT “wasted” $4.3 million in federal grants over four years “without accomplishing anything,” according to Ellen Andrews, who served as the board’s consumer advocate. State auditors also found deficiencies in state controls, legal problems, and a “need for improvement in management practices and procedures.” The state’s legislature is now developing a new exchange strategy.

Prediction: look for more HIEs to falter this year due to mismanagement and lack of sustainability.

Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances on the Rise

Electronic prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS) increased from 1,535 to 52,423 between July 2012 and December 2013, according to a study published in the American Journal of Managed Care. The percentage of pharmacies enabled for EPCS jumped from 13% to 30% during the same period.

The next task: figuring out how to get more than the current one percent of physicians to participate.

ONC Shares Lessons Learned from State HIEs

An ONC report on state HIEs finds that many exchanges lack a critical mass of data and are struggling with data sharing. The case study also found that the technical approaches, services enabled, and use of policy and legislation varied across states; collaboration among HIE participants is critical for success; and states are leveraging a variety of policy and regulatory levers to advance interoperability and data exchange.

CMS Seeks ICD-10 Testers

CMS is seeking approximately 850 volunteers for ICD-10 end-to-end testing in April, according to a CMS bulletin. Volunteers have until January 9to submit applications to participate in the April 26-May 1, 2015 testing week.

Pediatrics Report Increased EHR Use

Seventy-nine percent of pediatricians reported using an EHR in 2012, compared to 58% in 2009, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics. Only eight percent of physicians say their EHRs include pediatric-specific functionality.

Modernizing Medicine Buys RCM Vendor Aesyntix

EMR developer Modernizing Medicine acquires Aesyntix, a provider of RCM, inventory management, and group purchasing services.

Presumably Modernizing Medicine was most interested in Aesyntix’s RCM component, which may create some concern among Modernizing Medicine’s current RCM partners, which include ADP/AdvancedMD, CareCloud, and Kareo.

Healthcare.gov and the History of Failed IT Projects

Apr 3, 2014• 14

By Niam Yaraghi

Many years before the creation of Healthcare.gov, President Obama embraced data analytics during his early years in the Senate.

In 2006, he and senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) successfully sponsored the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which resulted in creation of usaspending .gov, “a significant tool that makes it much easier to hold elected officials accountable for the way taxpayer money is spent“.

A History of Failed Federal IT Projects

A considerable amount of taxpayer money is spent on federal IT projects, but in contrast to the aspirations of Obama in his early years in the Senate, it is not spent responsibly.

According to the Standish Group report, from 2003 to 2012 only 6% of the federal IT projects with over 10 million dollars of labor cost were successful.

52% of them were either delayed, went over budget or did not meet user expectations. The remaining 41% of the IT projects were abandoned or started from scratch. Perhaps most troubling is that healthcare.gov is just a one example among many.

Ensuring the Long-Term Viability of Health Insurance Exchanges

Oct 17, 2012• 7

By Phil Poley

November 16 marks the deadline for states to submit their plans for establishing a health insurance exchange—or HIX—either on their own or with some level of assistance from the federal government. For those states, a majority, according to Kaiser Family Foundation research, have yet to set up a HIX or develop concrete plans to do so. That’s an uncomfortably tight timeline in which to make some tough decisions.

According to the Supreme Court’s June ruling on the Affordable Care Act, states will no longer forfeit federal funding for Medicaid if they choose not to expand their Medicaid programs to all residents with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Nevertheless, they must ensure coverage for an estimated 16 million currently uninsured people with an income between 100 percent and 400 percent of that poverty level. And by October 2013, each state needs to demonstrate that it has a HIX in place that can provide such cover: A user-friendly, one-stop shop for affordable healthcare, or affirmatively state that it intends to participate in the Federal exchange..

A HIX needs to have sufficient scale to support large and balanced risk pools. But there may not be sufficient numbers of uninsured state residents to make the HIX viable, particularly if a state is small, or has an extensive Medicaid program already in place. How will such states attract and sustain enrollment? How will they attract payers?