Industry Insight

MRO and Inofile Form Partnership

MRO, a leader in secure, compliant, and efficient exchange of protected health information (PHI), recently announced a partnership with Inofile, a health care technology company specializing in cloud-based clinical document exchange. Through this collaboration, MRO will fulfill nonclinical release of information requests for Inofile’s Kno2 users.

Kno2 is a simple and affordable way to organize and securely exchange patient information through Direct Secure Messaging. With this technology, health care organizations of any size can implement and utilize the solution to enhance the exchange of patient information. MRO will aid in this process to ensure secure, compliant, and efficient fulfillment of medical records requests and proper handling of PHI.

“By partnering with MRO, small and medium-sized practices will have access to a remote PHI disclosure management service that is secure, affordable, and based on the latest standards in health care,” says Jon Elwell, CEO of Inofile. “The weight of compliance is removed from the backs of the providers, as is the burdensome task of manually fulfilling medical record requests from third parties outside of care coordination. This clears the path to a number of valuable benefits including time and cost savings, as well as workflow efficiency.”

Practices that adopt Kno2 will receive the full advantage of MRO’s PHI disclosure management capabilities: efficient processes, industry-leading execution and fulfillment, a robust quality assurance program, invoicing, and requester correspondence via one centralized platform.

— Source: MRO

Partners HealthCare and Samsung Electronics
Partner to Develop mHealth Solutions

Partners HealthCare recently announced a new partnership with Samsung Electronics to develop the next generation of personalized digital and mobile solutions for health and wellness. The first phase of this collaboration will include software development and clinical research to deliver tools to improve chronic disease management.

Remote monitoring programs help patients and providers effectively manage chronic conditions, enabling patients to track their health, securely share personal health data with their provider, and become collaborative partners in their care. Remote monitoring data, including blood pressure, blood glucose, and weight, gives health care providers a more complete picture of a patient’s condition in order to effectively assess health status and provide just-in-time care. Mobile health (mHealth) tools also help to improve patient engagement and medication adherence, and empower individuals to better self-manage their health and wellness.

“This joint development program has the potential to significantly propel mHealth and personal connected health forward,” says Kamal Jethwani, MD, MPH, senior director of connected health innovation at Partners HealthCare. “This project represents the start of how smart technology, intelligent algorithms, and world-class clinical expertise can be combined to change the paradigm of care delivery.” Jethwani is leading this research initiative at Partners HealthCare, which launched in a clinical trial in June.

“This partnership will be an important step toward embracing the real needs of health care providers and patients. We aim to leverage our technology to help individuals lead healthier lives, while delivering health care providers the tools they need to improve clinical outcomes,” says Suntae Jung, vice president of Samsung Electronics.

— Source: Partners HealthCare

CMS Approves Alpha II as a 2015 PQRS Registry

Alpha II, LLC, a developer of software platforms, software as a service, and publications that support the health care revenue cycle, recently announced that it has been qualified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as a Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) Registry for the 2015 PQRS program year. The Alpha II Registry was granted this CMS distinction following an extensive five-month self-nomination and attestation process.

The CMS PQRS Program enables individual eligible professionals and group practices to use objective feedback from reported data to assess and improve their quality of care. The CMS-qualification allows the Alpha II Registry—formerly listed as MEGAS, LLC—to report PQRS data on behalf of physicians and physician practices using the Group Practice Reporting Option through a platform of data collection, editing, and submission services. The Alpha II Registry supports all quality measures and all measure groups and serves all specialty types and their varying clinical consultation and data collection needs.

“We are very proud that for the second year in a row, the Alpha II Registry has earned this CMS distinction,” says Jan Powell, CEO of Alpha II. “While the CMS PQRS Program provides valuable feedback in order for physician practices to improve the quality and efficiency of care they deliver, the guidelines can be complicated and quite an undertaking alongside practicing medicine. Our secure, Web-based registry not only works directly with physician offices, but also seamlessly integrates with existing systems, including electronic health records, practice management systems, and clearinghouses. This significantly simplifies the reporting process and allows practices to easily report on time, prevent duplicate entries, and receive feedback in near real-time.”

Previously, the PQRS Program was an incentivized program to encourage eligible practices to satisfactorily report data on specific quality measures for covered professional services. This year, however, CMS will instead apply negative payment adjustments to all eligible physicians who do not satisfactorily report. “While the PQRS program is still considered optional for eligible practices, those who don’t participate or meet the reporting requirements for the 2015 reporting year will be penalized up to 2% of their reimbursement payments in 2017,” Powell adds.

— Source: Alpha II