Tennessee Hospital Association (THA) has partnered with Audacious Inquiry (Ai) to share real-time hospital data with TennCare and Tennessee hospitals to enhance the management of care provided to their enrollees and patients, respectively. THA’s new service, called ConnecTN®, will allow THA and its members to support statewide care coordination and quality improvement programs.
Currently, information about emergency room and hospital admissions is the most actionable data that can be shared with primary care providers, and now there is a single source for it.
With this information, the primary care physician immediately can connect with the patient to address the acute health issue that resulted in the emergency department (ED) visit. The doctor and patient then can work together to establish a plan for better managing the health of the patient to not only improve overall health, but avoid future ED visits.
An initial use of ConnecTN will be to support the primary care transformation initiatives of TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program. In 2014, TennCare was awarded a State Innovation Model (SIM) grant from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which focused on primary care transformation. The program provides healthcare services for 1.45 million people.
One of the key strategies of the transformation is to provide actionable data to physicians through a shared Care Coordination Tool (CCT). With CCT, physicians will know when their TennCare patients are in the emergency room or admitted to a hospital anywhere in the state in real time.
THA partnered with Ai to leverage the company’s extensive experience and success in real-rime notifications. Ai’s ENS has delivered almost 42 million notifications and benefitted more than 24 million subscribed patients across the nation. As pioneers in implementing solutions for encounter notification services, the Ai team has established a reputation for developing industry-leading technology with rapid time to value.
“With a solid track record of securely collecting hospital discharge claims data for more than 20 years, THA is in a unique position to expand services and provide our member hospitals with a real-time data platform, powered by Ai’s Encounter Notification Service® (ENS®),” explained Mary Layne Van Cleave, THA’s chief operating officer.
With expanded data, Tennessee hospitals will be provided opportunities to improve their own care delivery. For example, ENS can be used to notify Tennessee hospitals when their patients are admitted to or discharged from other hospitals in the state in support of readmission reduction programs.
The real-time hospital data initiative also will support TennCare’s care management programs by sending TennCare member data securely to the state’s Care Coordination Tool.
For more information, contact Yolanda James, 615-256-8240.
