HIMSS 2022: Boost Interoperability to Survive in Value-Based Care, Healthcare Execs Say

ORLANDO, Florida - Interoperability has been a hot topic in healthcare for over a decade, with the industry turning to digital tools for everything from capturing patient data to claims and billing. Recent regulations, like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ interoperability rules and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard enforcement, have helped promote progress in efforts that were previously slow-moving. But the transition to value-based care models demands a greater push for open data exchange. To maximize the potential for better outcomes, providers need access to a patient’s complete medical history, executives told Fierce Healthcare at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Global Conference in Orlando this week.

Shayan Vyas, M.D., Teladoc Health's vice president and medical director of hospitals and health systems, said that in his own practice, that idea of “whole-person care” is critical.  “When I see a patient, I’m trying to put this puzzle together. The more jigsaw pieces I can put together, the closer I can get to a diagnosis,” he said.

Providers need data aggregated across multiple sources to create a holistic view of the patient and to perform analytics on those data to surface insights, a concept that Bhaskar Sambasivan, CEO of CitiusTech, said all players in the healthcare ecosystem are warming to. “(Previously) there were trust issues and no real economic alignment for data transfer,” Sambasivan said. “That is changing with the notion of value-based care. Payers need access to provider data, and providers need access to payer data because you won’t be able to successfully administer a value-based contract if the baseline is not the same.”