Datavant Strengthens Technology Offerings and Health Data Exchange Network

At Datavant, we’ve set out to securely move the world’s most precious data – patient health data – to where it needs to be. Through our digitized network, modern technology tools and complementary services, we enable a better patient experience, better decision making by providers, and improved operating efficiencies for healthcare executives.

In this blog post, we step back to paint a picture of why secure health data exchange matters, and Datavant’s evolving role in light of recently strengthening our digital Release of Information (ROI) network and technology offerings, as well as our expanded impact outside of ROI, including into supporting value-based care organizations.

Why Health Data Exchange Matters

Moving health data with the proper authorization and driving meaningful action from that data remains much more burdensome, complicated and costly than it needs to be today. When patient health data can instead be securely accessed, released and connected to additional data seamlessly:

• Patients have a better understanding of their health, and an improved ability to shape their own care journeys
• Providers have a more complete view of their patients and more time to spend with their patients, leading to improved continuity of care and clinical decision-making
• Risk-bearing organizations better monitor the quality, outcomes, and cost effectiveness of patient care, while shifting care from reactive to proactive
• Researchers pursue novel questions, connecting high-value datasets with the consent of the participating organizations

This benefits the entire U.S. healthcare ecosystem for the better, closing millions of care gaps and helping us to more rapidly improve the quality and lower the cost of care.

Enabling Secure Exchange Without Sacrificing Operating Efficiency, Cost or Risk

Our Release of Information (ROI) offerings ensure the right health information is moved outside of provider organizations to the right requesters at the right time. We have been committed to partnering with providers to securely share patient data outside of their organizations for 40+ years, enabling the exchange of more than 60 million patient records per year.

Our digital ROI network has now reached more than 70,000 U.S. hospitals and clinics, with new capabilities enabling providers to leverage digital fulfillment regardless of which EHR they use. Where digital connectivity is deployed, providers benefit from:

• More satisfied patients: Unlocking rapid access to their records, rather than spending hours trying to navigate healthcare organizations
• More effective doctors: Obtaining information necessary to ensure continuity of care and make proper care decisions
• More efficient Health Information Management (HIM) professionals: Fulfilling digitally minimizes the need for manual processes, increasingly critical amidst persistent labor market concerns and cost pressures
• Less friction from requesters: Reducing calls and faxes repeatedly checking status of record requests due to 8x faster fulfillment
• Less compliance risk: Improving quality control processes guarantees zero Unauthorized Disclosures (UADs)

To complement digital ROI, providers continue to leverage our ROI and professional staffing services to minimize the time and cost challenges of manual workflows elsewhere in the data exchange process. These services deploy best practices for compliance and efficient operating procedures, based on learnings from thousands of provider environments.

Our ROI offerings are available at no cost to providers, and can open opportunities for future financial benefit. These offerings complement your investments in EHRs to extend and accelerate the expected operational and financial gains.

Datavant also partners with Finance and Revenue Cycle Management professionals to drive faster, more accurate payments and remove administrative waste through our coding and denials services and technology tools.

Streamlining Intake by Meeting Requesters Where They Are

Providers intake a large influx of disparate requests for patient data every day. These requests come from a diverse set of requesters and through many forums – including mail, fax, calls, walk-ins, emails, and EMRs or other web-based portals. This is administratively burdensome, creates friction with requesters and distracts from providing patient care, especially during high-volume periods such as Medicare Risk Adjustment seasons.

At Datavant, we have built a variety of technology tools to help healthcare organizations manage these different requests, including:

• Patient Request, a white-labeled Release of Information (ROI) authorization tool that supports millions of patients each year to efficiently request access to their records
• Provider Continuity of Care Request, an easy digital alternative to the fax- or phone-based request methods still favored by many providers (below)

• Request Manager, a tool enabling Ciox-managed payer requests to be viewed in one streamlined digital user interface vs. as discrete payer fax requests (below)

In addition to streamlining workflows for healthcare organizations, these tools greatly improve the experience for requesters.

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Driving Value in Value Based Care

As our healthcare system shifts into value-based care models, access to complete, high-quality medical information is necessary. Accountable Care Organizations and Managed Service Organizations need to access patient health data from the hundreds of hospitals, practices and clinics they work with. Traditional providers engaging in risk-bearing strategies have increasingly become requesters of patient health data. These value-based care organizations seek to advance their data strategies, better understand their patient populations, close care gaps and improve risk management.

To meet these evolving needs, Datavant’s offerings have extended into this space:

• We now connect data digitally from more than 1500 providers to value-based care organizations, enabling the ability to assess the quality, cost and outcomes of care being provided by those practices and clinics
• By releasing and retrieving health data in a standard format, we can partner with organizations to create standard data lakes to unlock operating efficiencies, minimize risk and pave the way for new value-added use cases
• Our ability to securely connect de-identified health data from an ecosystem of more than six hundred real world datasets, enables organizations to better understand their patient populations longitudinally, paving the way for more effective management of population health and participation in research

These capabilities ultimately enable a healthcare organization’s ability to close care gaps, improve the quality of patient care and lower the cost of care. By pairing these capabilities with more efficient Release of Information, we’ve seen leading ACOs and MSOs unlock new efficiencies and value for their organizations.

Conclusion

Securely moving precious patient health data improves clinical decision making and patient experience. Datavant’s digitized network, modern technology tools and complementary services enable providers to achieve this without sacrificing operating efficiencies or costs. Contact us to learn more.