The summer 2020 platform upgrade represents significant enhancements for HIDI participants, including the ability to identify, track and coordinate care for patients with COVID-19. The system will allow notifications to be pushed directly into existing workflows, in near real-time and at the point of care. This clinically relevant information will help care teams determine which of their patients may require additional resources, such as intensive care or isolation.

“Hospitals are investing in this system to improve the value of our state’s health care system, with an emphasis on the Medicaid program,” said Herb B. Kuhn, MHA President and CEO. “Under the leadership of Gov. Mike Parson and MO HealthNet Director Todd Richardson, the state is embarking on a major reform effort within the Medicaid program. The HIDI-Collective partnership will create critical infrastructure to help accelerate this reform — bringing value and cost reduction in the near and long term for Medicaid and, as the program expands, for all stakeholders.”

The project will apply analytics to identify risk and enable collaboration among providers to reduce emergency department utilization and inpatient readmissions — a hospital community priority. For example, in 2019 alone, more than 18,500 patients with patterns of high ED utilization — those with 10 or more ED and inpatient visits in a single year — accounted for less than 1% of all hospital patients in Missouri. However, these patients represented 8% of ED visits and inpatient utilization, resulting in more than $3.3 billion in hospital charges. Among this patient population, more than 45% had Medicaid coverage during the year, while another 32% were uninsured during at least one visit.

When fully implemented, HIDI’s analytic workbench will provide predictive “smart alerts” that preemptively inform health care providers about patients who most need their help. Via Collective’s tools, these alerts are surfaced appropriately within HIDI’s providers’ workflow. Analytic-informed alerts help with coordination throughout the continuum of patient care. For example, knowing that a patient is at higher risk of being readmitted at the time of admission empowers providers to make informed care decisions, and having a platform that facilitates collaborative coordinated care will help reduce avoidable excess readmissions.

“By facilitating the sharing of highly targeted, statistically significant predictive alerts with front-line providers who can immediately take action on behalf of a patient, and then by connecting those same patients with downstream primary and post-acute clinical resources, HIDI’s platform, in partnership with Missouri-area health information exchanges, ensures that stakeholders from different organizations can all operate as though they were on the same team, in some sense, with a crystal ball — because they are on the same team when caring for a shared patient,” says Chris Klomp, CEO of Collective Medical. “We’re proud to support HIDI and care teams across the country as they launch even better ways to care for patients in our shared communities.”

As part of a collaborative effort to build a thriving care coordination infrastructure for Missouri and beyond, HIDI is upgrading its platform to support providers by working in close partnership with state and regional health information exchanges. HIDI’s program is designed in the spirit of true interoperability and in alignment with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act.

“Rapid delivery of data about patients as they move through the health care system can help improve quality and safety,” said Jonathan Heidt, M.D., board member of the Missouri College of Emergency Physicians. “Data can enhance the health care system’s ability to build a team of providers and services around the patient, leading to better health outcomes.”