Research initiative to use collaborative approach on claims-based research

Stanford University and Southern Methodist University are launching a research initiative to tackle specific healthcare problems, collaborating with an Australian initiative.


Stanford University and Southern Methodist University are launching a research initiative to tackle specific healthcare problems, collaborating with an Australian initiative.

The U.S. research effort will rely on data analytics to solve vexing healthcare problems, such as identifying new ways to enhance patient outcomes while controlling costs, and better handling of the opioid epidemic.

The Australia initiative dates back to last April, when its government announced $55 million in funds over seven years to create the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre, with the aim of enhancing economic and business development opportunities.



In the United States, Stanford and Southern Methodist have selected the data analytics technology and supporting services of software vendor HMS. The company will facilitate the research data environment, which will include de-identified data from paid claims, eligibility data and associated data from clients who sign up to participate. HMS offers current healthcare eligibility data covering 290 million individuals, provides services to 40 Medicaid agencies and works with 325 insurers.

Leading universities in the U.S. will provide graduate students in the fields of healthcare economics, biostatistics, data science, public health and other fields, with the first research focusing on the opioid crisis.

The goal is to develop claims data-based predictive analytics models to identify potential opioid misuse risk factors for patients who have no previous abuse history; providers with at-risk opioid prescribing patterns; and relapse of patients into opioid misuse. Research led by Tina Hernandez-Boussard, an associate professor in medicine, biomedical data science and surgery at Stanford, will also try to identify characteristics of successful treatment regimens for opioid abuse.

Here are more health IT contract wins and go-lives reported during the past week.

* St. Joseph’s/Candler, a two-hospital delivery system in Georgia, is rolling out wayfinding technology to help patients and visitors navigate to the hospital, inside the hospital and outside. Indoor GPS will improve the patient experience and reduce missed and late appointments. Patients at Pooler will receive a wayfinding link inside text-based appointment reminders that give directions to the hospital and then inside. “We wanted to use our new Pooler location as the showcase for this new indoor GPS technology,” says Nolan Hennessee, vice president and CIO at St. Joseph’s/Candler.

* The American Autism and Rehabilitation Center in Daphne, Ala., has selected Allscripts as its new revenue cycle management vendor. The parties are familiar with each other, as the rehab center currently uses the vendor’s electronic health record and the FollowMyHealth patient engagement platform. Its services include speech, occupational and physical therapies, as well as family and legal services and nursing.

* BJC Healthcare in St. Louis has selected revenue cycle management software and services from R1 RCM to support affiliated hospitals and physician groups in ensuring appropriate payment for services provided and documented via charge capture, coding review, root cause analysis and education. Under a three-year agreement, the vendor will help the delivery system with analytics, a rules engine and a team of experts to help providers achieve accurate reimbursement for services rendered.

* Great Lakes Medical Imaging, with five sites in western New York, has selected NextGate to provide patient record matching accuracy for informed clinical decision-making and improved care team effectiveness. NextGate will implement a cloud-based enterprisewide master patient index to support Great Lakes’ growing radiology network with a single consolidated view of a patient’s clinical data and imaging files.

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