Our focus this month was on several topics. The primary theme was the technology underlying coordinated care. Does the technology exist to adequately collect and analyze data, coordinate care, enable wellness, and reward cost savings as entailed in the new state and federal initiatives to promote care management for the sake of greater efficiency and effectiveness? What is the current experience of systems attempting to put such programs in place? Our primary speaker on this topic was Scott Pickens, whose firm Clinton Rubin is currently working on projects for clients providing integrated/coordinated care management services across all market segments - public and commercial employers, providers, and payers. The services include wellness programs, disease management, catastrophic case management, occupational health, and EAP - all integrated together. This integrated services set offering obviously involves significant delivery platform challenges - especially around the data and analytics involved. We also heard from representatives of two healthcare systems with similar experience in coordinated care activities.
The new HIPAA regulations have recently been released and create a variety of challenges for all those operating in the healthcare industry. Nelson Mullins partner Cindy Hutto, who has deep experience in analyzing the effect of these new regulations, traveled to join us from her Charleston office to brief us on these effects and recommended action items, along with written materials prepared by her team.