Updated: October 26, 2016

How can post-acute and acute care providers partner to address the demands on the healthcare industry?

Hartman Executive Advisors, an independent technology advisory firm, recently brought together long-term post-acute care (LTPAC) CEOs and CFOs to discuss ways to develop and maintain meaningful partnerships with acute care providers.

There isn’t much downtime for healthcare executives and administrators, and as a result, they rarely connect with their industry peers on challenges and ways to achieve their organizational goals. Hartman’s LTPAC roundtable series for top executives provides the opportunity for discussion and idea sharing at the C-level.

Partnering for population health
At the most recent LTPAC roundtable, the topic was acute care partners and their expectations for post-acute providers related to technology and data. Here are the highlights:

Waiver 2.0, the update to Maryland’s All-Payer Model, represents an opportunity for post-acute engagement at the hospital level, related to both financial and quality goals. This includes:
– Shared revenue risk through bundled payments, ACOs, etc.
– Ability to care for higher-acuity patients in lower-cost settings
– Working with hospitals and other providers to avoid readmissions
– Implementing telehealth and other technologies to avoid unnecessary readmissions

Health information exchanges like CRISP (Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients), Maryland’s statewide health information exchange*, provide an answer to some of the problems associated with point-to-point integration, but barriers still exist.

A major challenge for post-acute care is prioritizing IT investments for the best potential ROI. For example, leaders struggle to understand how investments, like EHRs (electronic health records), can be leveraged for both financial and clinical purposes and strengthen the facility’s position in the market.

Are hospitals and other acute care providers asking the right questions of their long-term care partners? What questions should be asked to get to the ultimate goal of population health?

Getting started today
Waiver 2.0 is fast approaching in Maryland, and the time is now for leaders from both acute and post-acute care to work together as better partners to achieve the goals of the waiver.

However, LTPAC providers need to ensure they can provide relevant and accurate data before going into any partnership discussion. If your organization wants to be prepared with this information, Hartman can help you develop and implement a plan to collect relevant data and present yourself as a strong partner.

Are you a C-level healthcare or LTPAC executive who wants to contribute to the conversation and participate in an upcoming roundtable discussion for your industry? Sign up today to have your voice heard and to hear the voices of your peers.

Roundtables are hosted at Hartman’s office in Timonium, Maryland. Remote access is available.

*CRISP is a Hartman client

Original Post: June 10, 2016

Business intelligence in LTPAC drives better health and business outcomes.

Hartman Executive Advisors, an independent, strategic technology advisory firm, recently brought together long-term post-acute care (LTPAC) CEOs and CFOs to discuss fully leveraging business intelligence to achieve organizational success.

C-suite healthcare executives and administrators are busy with day-to-day operational activities and staff concerns, and rarely set aside time to connect with industry peers to discuss their top challenges and ways to drive their businesses forward.

A national survey of middle market executives revealed that, while 97 percent feel dependent on technology for organizational success, just 17 percent have an IT leader who is focused on strategy. To help executive leaders overcome this IT leadership deficit, Hartman facilitates industry-specific, executive-level roundtable discussions that connect IT and business strategy.

The Significance Of Data At Long-Term Care Facilities

At Hartman’s most recent LTPAC executive roundtable, CEOs and CFOs of long-term care facilities discussed the challenges and opportunities with gathering and synthesizing business intelligence, as well as the desire to move to a fact-based leadership model to reach their goals. Here are the highlights:

According to a Ziegler survey of long-term care facilities, 77 percent utilize a financial or operational dashboard to organize their data. However, 90 percent of the time, that dashboard is Microsoft Excel — a valuable tool, but not a sophisticated business intelligence platform capable of projecting into the future. Long-term care facilities are not fully leveraging their data, and as a result, are drowning in one-off requests and information anarchy — halting efficiency and productivity.
Business intelligence capabilities represent an opportunity for long-term post-acute care (LTPAC) leaders to make timely and accurate decisions on everything from hiring staff to investing in new technology, and to take proactive steps to improve service delivery, issue resolution and overall performance in a rapidly changing healthcare environment.
Dashboards for the sake of dashboards are not helpful — information gathered should be directly related to an organization’s business goals. Proactive business intelligence enables an organization to plan for, track and document what they want to measure and need to improve.
Becoming a data-driven healthcare organization requires team commitment, but it starts at the top. The first step to guiding your staff is determining what data you need in order to achieve your organization’s success metrics. This varies based on each organization, and the BI approach needs to address those needs strategically and granularly.

For example, a leader with labor management and utilization concerns can pose questions such as:

To what extent is my RN/LNP utilization driven by resident acuity?
What drives an increase or decrease in staffing need by staffing category?
How do I identify when an increase in available labor hours is temporary or permanent?

Want To Contribute To The Conversation?

Roundtables are hosted at Hartman’s office in Timonium, Maryland. Remote access available.