Dive Transient:
- Humana and Epic are partnering to hurry affected person appointment check-in and protection verification for Medicare Benefit beneficiaries, the businesses stated Tuesday.
- The brand new options are included within the digital well being document vendor’s payer platform, which permits insurance coverage particulars from Humana to be routinely shared with suppliers earlier than sufferers arrive at appointments, in line with a press launch.
- The collaboration is an early results of an initiative from the Trump administration that goals to spice up well being knowledge sharing and cut back repetitive, paper-based processes in healthcare, the businesses stated.
Dive Perception:
The partnership will enable greater than 800,000 Humana MA members who obtain care at round 120 totally different well being programs to test in at their physician’s workplace with out displaying their insurance coverage playing cards, in line with the press launch.
Entrance desk workers can use a digital card to test in sufferers, and protection info shall be out there upfront of appointments — so employees received’t must spend time manually getting into insurance coverage particulars. That ought to forestall errors and guarantee appropriate billing, Humana and Epic stated.
“From lowering time on the entrance desk by as much as 50%, to making sure their protection is correct and up-to-date, this makes insurance coverage info one much less factor sufferers want to fret about,” Alan Hutchison, vice chairman at Epic, stated in a press release.
The collaboration builds on the CMS’ Well being Tech Ecosystem, an initiative introduced by the White Home this summer time that included partnerships with dozens of huge healthcare and know-how corporations, the businesses stated.
The ecosystem focuses on encouraging adoption of a voluntary blueprint for well being knowledge sharing, in addition to boosting using digital well being instruments, like continual situation administration merchandise.
One objective of the initiative is to “kill the clipboard,” or facilitate seamless knowledge change so sufferers don’t need to repeatedly write out their medical historical past or different info every time they go to a health care provider.
The CMS stated the ecosystem would “ship outcomes” within the first quarter subsequent 12 months. That’s a reasonably fast turnaround for a plan with out a lot element, specialists stated this summer time.
However enhancing knowledge change — a long-term frustration within the healthcare system — is a worthy objective, and corporations discussing their plans could possibly be an indicator of the initiative’s progress, specialists added.
