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Heartburn Relief: UnitedHealth Joining Google Health and MSFT HealthVault?
From the August 6 edition of HISTalk — Healthcare IT News and Opinion:
"Re: UHG. Was at the Healthcare Quality Conference yesterday in Boston. Got to talking to a United Health exec who informed me that they have signed an agreement with Google Health and have a pending agreement with HealthVault. This backs up UHG’s previous statement that member records would be made portable. Individual made mention that the Google Health relationship extends beyond just claims records transfer and includes a technology partnership regarding UHG’s OMX."
Commentary: Among health care incumbents, health plans are experiencing the greatest heartburn over the emerging Personal Health Information Network (PHIN).
On the one hand, existing health plan IT and business models have been proprietary and closed. Here’s how a typical health plan might state their POV:
“We’ve spent multi-million dollars building OUR information systems. We see these IT systems as part of our competitive advantage. Share our data? Are you crazy? We have a fiduciary obligation to the patient NOT to share data. If we violate HIPAA by sharing data inappropriately, we risk spending time in jail. Besides, it’s OUR data, not the patient’s data.”
On the other hand, health plan business models of the past aren’t working :
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Health plan stocks are down dramatically in 2008 — “gotta do something different”.
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They are recognizing that proprietary IT and business models around data are limiting. Improving quality and coordinating care are team sports — you have to share data and play nicely with the other kids in the sandbox (doctors, hospitals, DM companies, other health plans).
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The benefits of implementing IT in health care will accrue primarily to health plans. The Markle Foundation reported that 88% of estimated financial benefits — in the form of improving quality, avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations and procedures, reducing costs — accrue to health plans, not to health care providers.
The heartburn creeps in when you recognize that the old way of thinking won’t work for the future.
Aetna seems to have been the first major health plan to have gotten past their heartburn and acted on the need to change. For example, Aetna is the only individual health plan to have endorsed Markle’s Common Framework for Networked Personal Health Information .
Will UnitedHealth be #2? Let’s hope so.
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Healthcare providers and services have been compartmentalized and competitive for many years. Unfortunately, this has not fostered collaboration across settings – accountability at each patient care point/venue or provided a foundation for quality and cost efficient care. The sooner providers, payors and clincians in general realize it is in all our best interest to get on board – the sooner we will see new and improved revenue models, business plans and accountability standards in place to drive the clinical and financial outcomes we need to control ever rising health costs and improve the quality of life of those patients served. The ability to make informed decisions based on the information at hand is vital for providers, patients and payors alike to achieve the ultimate goals and the information needs to be easily accessible and updated as proposed by EHR initiatives.
What is UHG’s OMX?