UMass Memorial Health Care Teams Up with Informatica and MedCPU on Innovative Solution for Reducing Preventable Readmissions

Data Integration Technology at the Heart of Readmissions Reduction Initiative

WORCESTER, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--UMass Memorial Healthcare (UMMHC), the largest health care system in Central New England, is implementing innovative technology to reduce the frequency of preventable readmissions as per the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Readmissions Reduction Program. The new UMMHC Readmissions Reduction Initiative will cover the entire inpatient and ambulatory environments of UMMHC, including all its affiliated physicians, their outpatient offices and their patients.

“UMass Memorial Health Care led us to a highly significant goal of creating a reliable solution that gains the clinicians’ respect for its accuracy and proficiency in promoting better patient care. We have strong confidence that our partnership shall deliver these expectations, and beyond.”

“The ability to accurately monitor patients’ clinical status and identify, in real-time, any administrative or clinical deficiencies in patients’ care that might increase the risk of avoidable readmission, is critical for our success in fighting the readmissions challenge,” said George Brenckle, PhD, senior vice president and chief information officer at UMass Memorial Healthcare. “There’s so much information about the patient, spread over multiple systems and multiple formats, that only with advanced technology that can consolidate it all into an accurate discrete snapshot of the patient’s clinical picture, we can provide significant assistance to our clinicians and case managers in maximizing our efforts for better patient care.”

UMass Memorial teamed with two technology companies, Informatica and MedCPU, to create a complete Readmissions Reduction initiative. The solution provides full administrative and clinical support, in one application, to providers, care managers and patients in managing and reducing avoidable readmissions. The solution:

• Uniquely captures the complete clinical picture from the clinicians’ free-text notes, dictations and structured documentation entered into UMMHC’s inpatient and outpatient EMRs, as well as data streaming from any other ancillary sources of clinical information at UMMHC
• Collects all administrative, discharge, admission and scheduling information for all UMMHC’s inpatient and outpatient activities
• Consolidates all administrative and clinical data into one comprehensive standardized database of accurate, discrete snapshot of clinical and administrative picture for each patient.
• Continuously processes and analyzes this information to identify any clinical or administrative deficiencies in the approach to the patient’s care, that might result in an avoidable readmission - done during the hospitalization period, prior to discharge and during the outpatient period.
• Prompts inpatient clinical staff, outpatient PCP/Provider, care managers and the patient on deficiencies and failures that might result in avoidable readmissions
• Provides its messages and prompts via e-mail/SMS text messages (to patients and outpatient PCP/Providers), Alert Manager (to care managers and outpatient PCP/Providers) and an Advisor Button (that floats on top of the EMRs used by the outpatient PCP/Providers and UMMHC’s inpatient EMR)

“With the Readmissions Reduction legislation recently coming into effect, it is imperative that UMass Memorial Healthcare have access to the most accurate and trustworthy data to ensure the best patient care possible,” said Richard Cramer, chief healthcare strategist, Informatica. “By partnering with MedCPU to address the readmission challenge, we’ve been able to offer a comprehensive solution that identifies high-risk patients and focuses on intervention and proactive medicine.”

“Our collaboration with Informatica enables us to deliver a highly accurate and efficient prompting system that overcomes one of the most difficult hurdles in healthcare – significant loss of information due to narrative documentation by clinicians,” said Eyal Ephrat, M.D., MedCPU CEO and co-founder. “UMass Memorial Health Care led us to a highly significant goal of creating a reliable solution that gains the clinicians’ respect for its accuracy and proficiency in promoting better patient care. We have strong confidence that our partnership shall deliver these expectations, and beyond.”

About UMass Memorial Health Care

UMass Memorial Health Care is Central Massachusetts' largest not-for-profit health care delivery system, covering the complete health care continuum with UMass Memorial Medical Center, its academic medical center, member and affiliated community hospitals, freestanding primary care practices, ambulatory outpatient clinics, a rehabilitation group and mental health services. UMass Memorial is the clinical partner of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. To learn more about UMass Memorial, please visit www.umassmemorial.org, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

About MedCPU:

MedCPU delivers accurate real-time clinical care advice through its revolutionary Advisor Button technology. It uniquely captures the complete clinical picture from clinicians’ free-text notes, dictations and structured documentation entered into any EMR, and analyzes it against a growing library of best-practice content, generating real-time precise prompts for best care consideration. MedCPU’s founding multi-disciplinary team has been leading the field of real-time clinical decision support for over 17 years, delivering intelligent error reduction software systems to many hospitals in the US. MedCPU applications include clinical and compliance support solutions. For more information, visit www.MedCPU.com

Note: Informatica is a registered trademark of Informatica Corporation in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.