Optimize Your Healthcare IT Ecosystem

Recent Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports show that the US National healthcare expenditure is estimated to reach $6.2 trillion by 2028. Plus, analysts predict similar health spending growth to triple to nearly $12 trillion by 2040. With such exponential growth, payers and providers are joining forces to tackle the ever-evolving healthcare market. Key factors include mergers and acquisitions, government regulations and a desire to work together to meet shared goals of improving the member experience and providing the best patient outcomes.

Discover three fundamental ways the healthcare industry is redefining collaboration and patient care with scalable always-on infrastructure.  

1. Combining clinical data with social determinants of health

Patients are receiving care across the healthcare continuum.  From primary care to specialists and emergency treatment, clinical information is being generated and sent to the payers via claims submission.  In addition, clinicians and risk managers are looking at the social determinants of health, which influence a patient's outcomes. Food insecurity, access to education, and even the availability of transportation to medical services can influence clinical outcomes for patients.   

By collecting clinical data and incorporating social determinants of health into analytics platforms, payers can gain insight into the overall health of the member population.  By identifying patients at risk for certain disease states, payers can work with their provider community to tailor interventions for each patient.  With a comprehensive clinical and social view of the patient, payers, and providers can collaborate not only to provide patient-specific interventions but also to reduce risk, cost, and adverse clinical outcomes for their shared populations. 

Robust, agile infrastructure supports advanced clinical analytics

To present value-based care criteria and feedback to providers, you need a robust data platform to store and analyze your enterprise's collected data.  Scalable IT solutions are essential to continue to grow and deploy new and forward-facing patient and provider initiatives. Optimized infrastructure ensures that data sets from clinical interventions as well as from wearables and patient monitoring, can be standardized and available at all times for clinicians and risk managers.

2. Value-based care

Today's providers are willing to take on Value-based arrangements but need timely information on their patient populations to minimize financial risk and implement clinical strategies for their patients. These risk contracts place more responsibility on providers to provide high-quality care for their populations while also remaining efficient. Without immediate access to the data they need, Providers cannot intervene at the right place at the right time. Healthcare organizations on both the payer and provider sides need to build integrated data models for their providers in order to ensure clinicians have the information at hand to care for their patients under a value-based system.

Partners like Pure Storage and WWT optimize your technology to support the evolution of your payer/provider collaboration. We deliver technology solutions that leverage the power of data, providing you with actionable information and identifying performance differences in real-time, which will highlight opportunities for improvement.  Expert advisors from WWT and Pure can expedite the IT optimization process—improving business and clinical outcomes across the continuum. 

3. Developing an application-based approach to interoperability and health information exchange through FHIR

How a common, scalable data platform can help 

To date, most health information exchange has been done by sharing documents between partners. Whether it is a Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) or a faxed .pdf of a patient's record, the data exchange is not giving either partner discrete data elements, which are essential.

Pure and WWT will work with you to create a scalable data infrastructure. Your database will be optimized when you leverage AI (Artificial Intelligence) and analytics in a clinical setting.  

Think of it this way. You're receiving data from multiple sources. You're pulling data from various storage arrays, scanned documents, x-rays, lab results, etc. These disparate data sources will not give you the type of analysis that will help your business or your patients.  

WWT and Pure deliver a common data platform across multiple databases, so your analytics can be reached easily, managed seamlessly, and processed effortlessly. Since healthcare organizations are the number one ransomware targets, you must also ensure a robust data protection strategy. Start by looking at the security around your interfaces and exchanges. Identify what data protection solutions you have there. WWT and Pure work with companies that say they don't want any interfaces entering their production system. In these cases, we ensure data goes into a repository outside the production system. When looking at the interfaces between systems, you need to ensure all those different areas have secure connections. By consolidating your data on Pure Storage with SafeMode enabled, you will have immutable copies of your data to restore from if you experience a breach, allowing you to restore quickly, and you won't have to pay the ransom.  

WWT and Pure help you leverage existing and new technologies to solve complex business problems.

About WWT

WWT understands the importance of providing a holistic solution to your entire organization.  We look at the entire process -- from beginning to end -- by delivering both strategy and execution and acting as a bridge between business and technology. We remove the barriers to digital transformation.  Developing collaborative partnerships with customers allows us to connect organizations to new possibilities and make positive changes.  Our goal is to make deliberate positive changes in healthcare by optimizing your network, data center, and everything in between.  We design technology to deliver the best business outcomes and test solutions' viability in our Advanced Technology Center (ATC).

About Pure

The top healthcare innovators rely on Pure Storage to redefine the storage experience and simplify how people consume and interact with data. Pure's fast and future-ready storage means no more "click and wait" for clinical answers. No more disruptive data storage upgrades. Just quicker insights for better patient care. 

As an Elite Partner, WWT began its strategic relationship with Pure in 2013 and has since become one of Pure's largest partners. 

We work together seamlessly to deliver the best-performing solutions for your needs. 

Authors 

Priscilla Sandberg, Senior Healthcare Strategic Alliances Manager at Pure Storage 

Justin Field, Technical Solutions Architect at WWT