Positioning hospitals and health systems as the preferred provider of population health enhancement initiatives within the communities they serve is the sole purpose of Applied Health Analytics. The company provides strategy leadership, best-in-class technology and go-to-market support that orients provider-centric population health initiatives, direct-to-employer strategies and risk-based contracting. Powered by Applied Health Analytics leadership and technology, health systems drive revenue and enhance payer mix by satisfying the growing demand for commercial market population health management initiatives.
The healthcare systems in the US and globally are undergoing a period of rapid transformation. Medical technology breakthroughs, economic pressures and demographic trends are driving that transformation, but key enablers and catalysts for those changes are advancements in Analytics, Data Science, Cognitive Computing, and Machine Learning. Massive volumes of data are created during regular healthcare administration, delivery, and research operations; additionally, outside the medical community people produce data as part of their daily activities and social interactions that can be mined for medical use.
Founded in 2009, Nashville-based Applied Health Analytics, provides a range of analytics, technology and services to hospitals and health systems that support population health, value-based care arrangements, direct-to-employer strategies and risk-based contracting. A joint-venture partner with Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Atrium Health, Applied Health Analytics empowers hospitals and health systems to administer programs that influence a positive payer mix, reduce health benefit costs, improve quality outcomes and manage patient health.
“We are seeing a movement in the healthcare industry that is not centered around payers or providers. It is spurred by employers, representing the demand side in health care, which is frustrated with increased health benefit costs and no correlating ROI. In response, employers are empowered to act and form non-traditional partnerships to decrease spend and improve the health of their employees,” says Robert Chamberlain, Chairman and CEO at Applied Health Analytics. “If health systems do not heed the signs of this new market direction and continue to operate in a business-as-usual mode, they risk being supplanted and losing this population base—and their associated commercial reimbursement model—to their new competition.”
Robert has taken the company to new heights at an unprecedented rate. Robert directs the company vision and leads strategic partnerships and investor relations. He is a veteran executive and noted entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience working with employers and health systems across the United States. Robert is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurialism and successful payer-provider partnerships and has authored numerous articles which have appeared in such publications as The Tennessean, Healthcare Financial Management Magazine, Benefits & Compensation Digest, Health Management Technology and Modern Healthcare. Nashville Business Journal named him a 2017 and 2014 Healthcare Hero, and Applied Health Analytics one of 2014’s 30 fastest growing small businesses.
The Right Strategy
Applied Health Analytics has proven that armed with the right strategy, technology and execution, community-based hospitals and health systems can leverage their trusted brand to successfully partner with employers and positively impact health system growth and financial performance.
The company’s strategy leadership, technology and marketing support assist providers to become less reliant on decreasing government reimbursement models, win risk-based contracts with community-based employers, consolidate multiple technology applications into a single platform, administer efficient workflows and enhanced care pathways, attract new patients outside of their ecosystem, integrate clinically and claims resources to validate ROI, and possess the middleware necessary to aggregate data from disparate technologies. The company provides technology-based solutions for health institutions to work toward a population health business model in the employer market. For example, biometric screenings can be a difficult business, not only for the employer and health system but the specific individual also. Applied Health Analytics has designed a platform that automates the collection and analysis of biometric data in real time and instantaneously pushes results to the clinician and the individual at the point of care. The combination of technology, data, and health system integration is beneficial for hospital leadership interested in driving revenue growth, increasing commercial market share and enhancing their payer mix.
“Applied Health Analytics’ software, along with the strategy provided by Robert and his team, is an irreplaceable component to the positive trajectory of our system’s HEALTHWORKS division,” asserts Daniel J. Birach, president, HEALTHWORKS Division at Carolinas HealthCare System and Applied Health Analytics’ board member. “Not one to rest on his laurels, Robert continues to develop innovative paths for his company to travel to make data more digestible and transactional, and to meet the commercial market consumer where they are.”
Impacting Healthcare
Employers represent the demand side of healthcare. Over the years, they have become frustrated with increased health benefit costs and no correlating return on investment. They are empowered to act and form untraditional partnerships to decrease spend and improve the health of their employees. Applied Health Analytics’ health system partners possess the tools proven to decrease health benefit premium expenses, advance patient access to health services, focus on preventive care and disease management, and identifying high-risk employees not represented the claims or electronic medical record data.
The company also assists Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in simplifying their work everyday. ACOs have robust information exchange capability across multiple care settings, providers, patients and family members to coordinate care. Applied Health Analytics’ technology enables ACOs to improve quality and cost-containment measures by providing real-time data to multiple constituencies, facilitate communication channels between providers, patients and families, apply pre-emptive and disease management strategies across the entire population, create value and risk-based contracts with self-funded employers and payers, and architecting health plans specific to the risks within the employer population.
Tracking the Engagement and Compliance of Local Workforces
Applied Health Analytics, LLC, which provides best-in-class analytics, technology and services to health systems across the United States in support of population health and value-based care arrangements with employers, has released a Learning Management System (LMS) application to store, distribute, track and incent the viewing of video content. The LMS was beta-tested with UnityPoint Health – Optimum Health Solutions, headquartered in Peoria, Ill. and is part of the Company’s interoperable suite of technology, bIQ.
The LMS system consolidates multiple technologies and interfaces employed by health systems to engage their employees, and local employers and their workforce, in the use of online learning modules to address the challenges of communicating and tracking such topics as workforce compliance requirements, cybersecurity, health education and care path adherence. The all-in-one application supports use cases like Post-Hire Regulatory and OSHA Compliance, Health Enhancement Education, Challenges and Incentives, Care Pathway Educational Content, General Well-Being and Health Promotion and Human Resource Management, Training and Education.
The Applied Health Analytics team beta-tested its system with Unity Point Health in Peoria, Illinois. The application, which is similar to some of the services marketed by downtown-based HealthStream, lets employers follow up on the courses taken with quizzes, which Applied Health Analytics CEO Robert says helps drive behavior change. “It’s very easy for an employer or a health system to identify educational needs, provide those needs online, append the ability to determine someone understands the content they’re intended to be educated on, and then add that to the patient or the employee file showing that they indeed participated in the LMS capability,” Chamberlain says.
The system supports topics such as workforce compliance requirements, cybersecurity and specific care instructions. The latter is designed to better connect employees with patients. “You can utilize it to deliver care pathways,” Chamberlain says. “The Learning Management System becomes the method through which the health systems can communicate and monitor compliance with care […] You’re taking complex information, communicating it in an environment that the patient, member or the employee prefers, and in a way that can be adjusted to a level people are comfortable with.” That flexibility — content can be presented in various formats such as text, video or audio — makes it easier to personalize patient information and guidance for things such as making sure they are restricting certain foods and adhering to medication schedules.
For the days to come, Applied Health Analytics will continue to focus on innovating their solutions by incorporating the highest degree of research & development. Robert aims at introducing a new vision and product every year in order to stay ahead of his competitors and also offer customers the best solutions in the market. Applied Health Analytics wants to continue sharing its innovative platform with healthcare institutions and their users as they transform themselves from commercially insured targeted population health models drivers.
