Cerner invests in population health management with agreement to acquire online health and wellness platform, PureWellness to improve better outcomes.
Yesterday, Cerner announced it has reached an agreement to acquire PureWellness, a leading health and wellness company which develops solutions to enable population health, individual engagement and measurable lifestyle improvements.
Cerner Senior VP, Matthew Swindells wrote about their reasoning behind their recent investment in PureWellness on Cerner’s official blog stating:
Cerner Senior VP, Matthew Swindells
“As new reimbursement models emerge, the individual will play an increasingly important role in health care ecosystems around the world. Organizations are realizing they will need to shift their focus from what we’ve referenced as “sick care” to a model that prioritizes keeping healthy people healthy and helping people with illnesses manage them better. Part of that involves providing them with tools that facilitate engagement with the various aspects of their health and care, and we think the combination of our Millennium solutions and Healthe Intent platform with PureWellness’ engagement platform creates the most comprehensive set of capabilities on the market to support an individual’s health and care needs. Individual engagement is an important piece of a comprehensive approach to population health management, a concept we see playing a vital role in the evolution of health care.”
Cerner believes as more healthcare organizations, population health management is imperative to achieve better outcomes with minimal health care spending driven by a common series of common market pressures.
To effectively respond to these market pressures, Cerner outlined a three-step approach to the creation of high performance health networks in this new landscape:
Decrease costs – All organizations will need to focus on continuing to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their provider services. There is no alternative to increasing productivity through improved workflow, reduced waste and an greater quality. EHR implementation and the associated process redesign is a critical component of this step.
Secure income – In the new world organizations will need to develop more robust service lines that deliver within the the funding available, manage patients within their network of care and ensure that they are optimizing their revenue against the incentives that payers are offering. As they step into the wider challenge of reducing the total cost of healthcare by better population health management, organizations will also need to renegotiate their contracts with their payers to ensure that they are rewarded for doing the “right thing” and their contracts with network of supporting providers to ensure that they are aligned around the same goals. These new challenges are why Cerner is developing its population health solutions and next generation revenue cycle management as part of our Healthe Intent platform.
Optimize care delivery – Those organizations that take on the challenge of population health management by managing risk will need to rethink both the role of the hospital and the role of the individual. For example, fewer patients will be managed in hospital, many reviews show that up to 40% of patients in hospital could be managed in a lower cost setting. We are developing the ability to create a managed health network that supports extended care and the medical home through our integrated Healthe Intent platform. This platform will enable evidence-based care and decision support to be provided in the location that is most suitable for the patient, even their own home.
Cerner expects ACOs to adopt platforms like PureWellness to help manage their populations to reduce health care costs and improve productivity.
Swindells concluded:
“In short, you need to identify members of a population that may require management of a particular health condition. You also need the ability to predict where health interventions will be effective and attribute that person to the accountable provider(s). Finally, you need to take the appropriate action, measure the outcomes for the person, and manage the effectiveness of the programs well as the performance of the network.”
For more information on Cerner’s acquisition of PureWellness, visit their official press release here
