NEW YORK – Based on the value accrued to stakeholders, health plans should lead the funding of community-based health information exchanges, or HIEs, said Steve Martin, president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska.
All HIE stakeholders will experience gains in business processes and see quality improvement, but the traditional reimbursement model needs to change to an incentivized system that rewards physicians and health systems, he told attendees as part of a panel at Axolotl’s 7th Annual Customer Conference.
BCBS of Nebraska is an early funder and active collaborator of the Nebraska Health Information Initiative, or NHII, health information exchange. As a shareholder-owned payer, BCBS of Nebraska is driven to “show real efficiency” in order to return money to its members, said Martin.
“We are there to serve members and to have high-quality care,” he said. The NHII’s goal of efficiency and quality in healthcare delivery plays into BCBS of Nebraska’s mission.
BCBS of Nebraska is incentivizing physicians to adopt Axolotl’s EMR Lite, which Martin called a “low-administration cost application,” and will pay physicians more money to provide disease management. The benefit of HIEs goes to members, he said. “It’s about quality,” he said.
Three major hospitals and three payers are supporting the Idaho Health Data Exchange. The HIE is working with Boise State University to evaluate data to determine who should be funding the HIE. Executive Director LaDonna Larson said it will be interesting to see how the community-betterment model changes to justify the levels of commitment by the various stakeholders.
Idaho’s HIE is experiencing sticking points between its payers and providers regarding payer access to data and what it will do with that data. “We need to start small to build trust between physicians and payers,” Larson said.
Rochester RHIO’s board includes three health plan members – “a broad payer representation,” according to executive director Ted Kremer. “Clearly, we want to provide value to stakeholders,” he said.
Bottom line: it’s going to take electronic medical record systems and health data exchange to deliver greater efficiencies and quality of care, which benefit all stakeholders, said Martin.